The Desiring Self Rooting Pastoral Counseling and Spiritual Dir - Nodrm

Rooting Pastoral Counseling
and Spiritual Direction

in Self-Transcendence
Walter E.Conn
253.5
C671
1998
The Desiring Self
Rooting Pastoral Counseling

and Spiritual Direction in Self-Transcendence
Walter E. Conn
PAULIST PRESS
New York/Mahwah, N.J.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:
The author thanks the editors of the following journals and books for use of mate¬
rial that originally appeared in different form in their pages: Counseling and Values,
Horizons, Pastoral Psychology, The Way, and The New Dictionary of Catholic Spiritu¬
ality, ed. Michael Downey (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1993).
Copyright © 1998 by Walter E. Conn
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or translated in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording,
or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing
from the Publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Conn, Walter E.
The desiring self : rooting pastoral counseling and spiritual direction in self¬
transcendence / Walter E. Conn,
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8091-3831-X (alk. paper)
1. Pastoral counseling. 2. Spiritual direction. 3. Self. I. Title.
BV4012.2.C59 1998
253.5—dc21 98-39635
CIP
Cover design by Tim McKeen

Interior design by Joseph E. Petta
Typeset in 11/13 Berkeley Oldstyle
Published by Paulist Press

997 Macarthur Boulevard
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www.paulistpress.com
Printed and bound in the

United States of America
NR 04 '99
CONTENTS
Introduction 1
1. Understanding Mary 9
Mary’s Story 9
Fowler’s Interpretation 11
Ford-Grabowsky’s Interpretation 15
Conclusion 18
2. From Self-Denial to Self-Realization: An American History 20

Ideals of the Self through Four Centuries 20
Self-Denial 21
Self-Love 22
Self-Culture 23
Self-Mastery 23
Self-Realization 24
Self-Realization in Modern Pastoral Counseling 27
Seward Hiltner 21
Carroll Wise 28
Paul Johnson 29
Wayne Oates 30
Self-Realization in Context: Revisioning Pastoral
Counseling 31
The Contexts of Pastoral Counseling 31
Clinebell’s “Revised Model” 32
The “Revised Model” Revised 33
Self-Realization as Self-Transcendence 34
Self-Realization and Self-Denial 35
iii
iv CONTENTS
Self-Transcendence 35
Conversion 36
3. Understanding the Self 38

From Person to Self: A Brief History 39
Ego: From Conscious to Unconscious 42
The Conscious “I”: The Self-as-Subject 45
“Me”: The Self-as-Object 52
4. The Self in Post-Freudian Psychoanalytic Theory 57

Background and Transition 57
Object-Relations Theory 58
Self Psychology 61
Integration and Identity 63
The Unity of the Self 66
5. Self-Transcendence, the True Self, and Self-Love 71

Desire for Self-Transcendence 71
Merton’s True Self 75
Self-Love 78
6. The Developing Self: A Pastoral Counseling Guide 81

The Child: Trust—Breaking the Bonds of Egocentrism 82
From Egocentrism to Objectivity 82
Trust and Hope 86
Self: Differentiation and Integration 87
The Impulsive Self: Autonomy, Initiative, and Industry 89
The Imperial Self and Concrete Thinking 92
Early Moral and Faith Development 93
The Adolescent: Searching for Independent Meaning,
Values, and Faith 95
Identity and Formal Thinking 95
The Interpersonal Self: Adolescent Moral and
Faith Development 99
The Institutional Self and Moral Relativism 100
The Young Adult: Desire for Intimacy, Mutuality,
Commitment 103
Intimacy, Ethical Strength, and Adult Knowing 103
The Interindividual Self: Postconventional
Morality and Faith 105
CONTENTS V
The Middle and Older Adult: The Quest for Interiority

and Final Integration 108
Generativity, Universal Ethics, and Paradoxical
Faith 108
Integrity and Universalizing Faith 110
7. The Self in Radical Transformation: Spiritual Direction

for Christian Conversion 113
Basic Moral Conversion: A New Way of hiving 118
Affective Conversion: A New Way of Toving 120
Critical Moral Conversion: A New Way of Knowing 122
Religious Conversion: A New Way of Being 126
Conclusion 132
8. Mary Revisited 134

Psychology, Theology, and Pastoral Strategy 134
The Self: Fowler and Ford-Grabowsky 137
Mary: Development and Conversion 141
Appendix: Self-Transcendence in Counseling 153
Notes 159
Index 182
DEDICATION
To Joann Wolski Conn, Eileen Flanagan, and Phillip Bennett

of the Neumann College Graduate Program in
Pastoral Counseling, Spiritual Direction, and Spiritual Care
In memory oj
Bernard Lonergan
INTRODUCTION
Desire is at the heart of Christian experience. From Augustine’s

Confessions to Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain, Christian
autobiography has centered on desire. This tradition has empha¬
sized a fundamental distinction in desire: the desire to possess and
the desire to give. From Augustine and Merton we learn about con¬
cupiscence, but also about the desire to rest in God—not to possess
God, but to give oneself fully to God.1 In lesser literature we read
about grasping the truth, possessing the good, gaining justice, hav¬
ing love, but through the classics of the Christian tradition we dis¬
cover our desire to give ourselves to truth, to the good, to justice, to
love, in a word, to God-our desire to dwell in the God who is truth,
who is goodness, who is love. Such is the radical meaning of Chris¬
tian vocation.2 This book on the desiring self is a study of the self
with a heart restless for God.
To a great extent, pastoral counseling and spiritual direction
focus on desire. “Only by attending to our desires,” writes Philip
Sheldrake, “are we able to encounter our deepest self—the image of
God within us.”3 Many of our desires are possessive, even obses¬
sive. But only by taking all our desires seriously as our own can we
distinguish our deepest desires from the superficial, the unhealthy,
as well as from instincts and needs, both conscious and uncon¬
scious. Such discernment is a central task of pastoral counseling
and spiritual direction, an always difficult task because intense feel¬
ings are not always deep desires. In our deepest selves we discover
1
2 THE DESIRING SELF
that our radical desires are God’s desires/ In other words, our radi¬
cal desires are God within us, and thus disclose not only who we
ultimately are but also, very concretely, who we ought to be.5 Our
deepest desire finally is one—an eros of the self for the infinite, an
eschatological desire that is never filled but ever deepened by the
Desired. To rest in God, therefore, is paradoxical: it is to dwell in the
dynamic openness of infinite Desire itself.6
The self finds itself in a deeply ambiguous situation these days.
A modern creation taken for granted by much of philosophy, theol¬
ogy, and psychology, the reality and, indeed, the very possibility of
a unitary and coherent self is also denied by some important con¬
temporary authors.7 My approach understands the self as a unity,
but a complex unity-in-tension. Defined by its desire for self¬
transcendence, this self’s very meaning is constituted in its relation
to others. Although I have learned from various sources, ancient to
contemporary, this book is not an entry in the ongoing cultural
debate about the self. The understanding of the self presented here
will inevitably be located somewhere on the map of current
options, but this book’s purpose is primarily constructive and
practical—a handbook for pastoral counselors and spiritual direc¬
tors struggling with the meaning of self in their work, a guidebook
for practitioners seeking to find their way through the labyrinth of
psychological theories about the self.
There is a widespread misunderstanding that theory is impracti¬
cal, only for theoreticians. The truth is that theory is for practition¬
ers. Architects, for example, need to understand the physical
properties of steel in order to design bridges. Pastoral counselors
and spiritual directors need to understand the psychospiritual
properties of the sell in order to effect development and promote
conversion. Unfortunately, the nature of the self has proven more
elusive than the nature of steel. This book means to be both theo¬
retical and practical, to present a theoretical understanding of the
self of practical import tor architects of the soul. Focusing on the
self in its desire for transcendence, 1 will attempt to design several
bridges: between psychology and theology, between the self and
transcendence, between development and conversion, between
pastoral counseling and spiritual direction. And at every point I
will try to bridge the theoretical and the practical. This book, then,
is an essay in integration—a practical theory of the desiring self.
INTRODUCTION 3
The psychology-theology connection in pastoral counseling and

spiritual direction needs-some clarification here at the very begin¬
ning. M. Scott Peck has highlighted the significance of this bridging
as part of a historical movement “out of an age of excessive special¬
ization into an age of integration.”8 In pastoral counseling’s rela¬
tively short history, for example, there have been many attempts to
make it interdisciplinary by integrating psychology on the one side
and either theology, or religion, or spirituality, or Christian faith on
the other. All too often, of course, psychology ended up dominat¬
ing the pastoral counseling partnership.
Pastoral counseling had hardly been established, therefore,
when—counterbalancing psychology’s strong influence—efforts
were begun to distinguish what was distinctively pastoral about it.
Perhaps the most successful of these efforts has been the specifica¬
tion of context as the feature that distinguishes pastoral counseling
precisely as pastoral. This context has been identified, for example,
both as pastoral care (for example, the parish) and, more generally,
as the “moral and religious assumptive world associated with the
Judeo-Christian tradition,”9 that is, the faith that constitutes the
caring community. Today, the trend is clearly in the “direction of
reaffirming the distinctively religious and theological dimensions
of pastoral counseling.”10 Just how this is to be done is not so clear,
however. And neither are the central terms of the discussion.
A basic distinction is necessary if we are to appreciate the com¬
plexity of the integration issue that Peck rightly emphasizes. We
must distinguish between first- and second-order questions,
between those questions that are immediately practical and those
theoretical questions that have significant practical implications. To
designate the full ministry of pastoral care within a Christian com¬
munity as the proper context of pastoral counseling is to respond to
the first order, immediately practical issue of assuring the Christian
character of counseling: counseling will be pastoral insofar as it is
explicitly understood and practiced in the context of the Christian
community’s ministry of pastoral care. In this practical equation,
then, pastoral counseling is related to the context of pastoral care;
pastoral counseling is identified as a particular ministry within the
full ministry of pastoral care.
As adequate as this response may be to the question of distin¬
guishing pastoral counseling from secular counseling, it implicitly
4 THE DESIRING SELF
assumes that counseling is compatible with Christian faith. An alto¬

gether different kind of response is necessary if one questions that
very assumption, if one asks the second-order question of whether
counseling really is compatible with Christian faith, whether it
truly is a form of pastoral care. Now the theoretical cat is out of the
bag, for now one is asking whether the psychological foundation of
counseling is consistent with the theological understanding of
Christian faith—or, rather, whether a particular psychological foun¬
dation of counseling is consistent with one’s particular theological
understanding of Christian faith (for only particular understand¬
ings of abstractions like “psychology” and “theology” exist in the
concrete). Now the issue is one of relating (linking or splitting,
integrating or differentiating) interpretations or theories of the
human: critically correlating psychologies and theologies. Some
may relate positively even though others may not. One theology
may deny the possibility of integration with any psychology;
another may not. One psychology may reject the validity of all the¬
ology; another may not. Obviously, then, how one understands
“psychology” and “theology” is crucial.
If, for example, psychology is understood as promoting self-
affirmation, self-fulfillment, or self-realization, and if Christian faith
is understood theologically as demanding self-denial, self-emptying,
or self-surrender, the candidates for integration appear to be radi¬
cally opposed to each other. But, these are precisely the visions pre¬
sented by the major psychologies grounding contemporary
counseling and by traditional readings of the Christian gospel. It is
no wonder, then, that the pastoral counseling movement has strug¬
gled with the theoretical problem of relating psychology and theol¬
ogy from its beginning to the present day. Is it possible to reconcile
the psychological goal of self-realization with the theological under¬
standing of self-surrender demanded by the gospel, and thus effect a
loundational integration at the very heart of pastoral counseling? A
Christian s decision on whether or not to use psychological ideas
and techniques in the practice of the pastoral care we call counseling
will depend on her or his answer to this basic theoretical question.
I am convinced that a theory of self-transcendence can not only inte-
giate the goals of self-realization and self-surrender in a single
vision ol the human person, but also explicate the intrinsic unity of
INTRODUCTION 5
authentic psychological and theological interpretations of the self’s

structured dynamism to reach beyond itself.
While I referred specifically to pastoral counseling in the previous
paragraph, the point is also true, mutatis mutandis, for spiritual direc¬
tion. Though spiritual direction is a much older (indeed ancient)
form of pastoral care, its relation to psychological theories has
become a major issue in recent decades. Early pastoral care in Amer¬
ica was actually a Protestant version of spiritual direction. And, as we
will see, the best of contemporary pastoral counseling includes the
concerns of spiritual direction within it. To the extent that a distinc¬
tion needs to be made between the two, I specify pastoral counseling
as dealing with particular problems (developmental and others) in a
Christian’s life, and spiritual direction as addressing a Christian’s
radical desire for ongoing development and conversion.
My theoretical premise is that the fundamental desire of the self is
to transcend itself in relationship: to the world, to others, to God.
But only a developed, powerful self has the strength to realize signif¬
icant transcendence. My approach, therefore, recognizes two focal
points in the fundamental human desire: the drive to be a self, a cen¬
ter of strength; and the dynamism to move beyond the self in relation¬
ship. My interpretation of the desiring self will not only include
both elements, it will insist on their inextricable connection; the
desires to be a self and to reach out beyond the self must always be
understood together: separation and attachment, independence and
belonging, autonomy and relationship. The self exists only in rela¬
tionship to the other. This dual desire of the human heart is
expressed in the two words of my basic theoretical term, “self¬
transcendence,” and it is the core of what I mean by “the desiring
self.” Charles Taylor has argued persuasively that the self must
always be connected to the good.11 My interpretation of the desiring
self insists that this connection is intrinsic: by its nature the self
desires to transcend itself, to move beyond itself to the good.
Without an accurate understanding of the self, the meaning of
self-transcendence remains vague, leaving pastoral counseling and
spiritual direction without an integrated theoretical base, and pas¬
toral counselors and spiritual directors without an effective practi¬
cal appreciation of their clients’ radical desires and possibilities.
The understanding of the self presented here must be complex:
multidimensional and interdisciplinary. Integrating insights from
6 THE DESIRING SELF
philosophy and theology as well as psychology, it will be defined

in relation to, and include within it, basic meanings of often diffi¬
cult terms like person, ego, subject, the “I,” the “me,” identity, con¬
sciousness, and the unconscious. To put it briefly, 1 will be arguing
that the self (the person precisely as conscious) is a unity-in¬
tension—a dynamic, dipolar, dialectical, embodied, first-person
reality constituted by consciousness and experienced as “1” (a
creating-self at the subject-pole striving for meaning and value in
self-transcending relationships) and “me” (a created-self at the
object-pole consisting of material, social, and spiritual selves). In
this context, the ego will be understood as the unconscious correl¬
ative of the self’s “I,” a unifying drive toward integration, organiza¬
tion, and meaning.
In short, this book is intended as a practical guide through the
maze of theories about the self for the Christian who, as a profes¬
sional helper, is attempting to relate psychological theory to Chris¬
tian faith. This book should enable the reader to approach any
other discussion of the self in a critical and creative way, whatever
its perspective may be—psychoanalysis, Jung’s analytic psychology,
object relations theory, self psychology, transpersonal psychology,
or developmental psychology.
I am convinced that an accurate understanding of the desiring
self in its journey through development and conversion is neces¬
sary for every practitioner of the Christian life. I trust that you will
agree, and hope that you will find the following pages of theory
eminently practical. In order to demonstrate concretely the practi¬
cal need for a clear and adequate understanding of the self, we will
begin in Chapter 1 with a well-known case study and its conflict¬
ing interpretations. Then, after situating the self in the history of
American pastoral counseling in Chapter 2, I will construct an
understanding ol the self in Chapter 3, give it a post-Freudian psy¬
choanalytical context in Chapter 4, and elaborate on it in terms of
self-transcendence, the true self, and self-love in Chapter 5. In
Chapters 6 and 7, summarizing earlier work,121 will consider the
self in its development and conversions, and finally, in view of all
this, take a second, critical look at the case study in Chapter 8.
The completion of a book is a special occasion to reflect on the
gifts that made it possible, and to thank some of the people who
offered them. In memory ot Bernard Lonergan, I am dedicating
INTRODUCTION 7
this book to my wife, Joann, and to Eileen Flanagan and Phillip

Bennett, our friends and colleagues in the Pastoral Counseling,
Spiritual Direction, and Spiritual Care Graduate Program at Neu¬
mann College, Aston, Pennsylvania. I am also deeply indebted to
my colleagues over the years at Catholic Social Services in Chester
County, especially Lisa Curran, O.S.F., Bill Refer, and Anita
Mentzer. At Villanova University, I want to thank Sue Toton and
Rodger Van Allen for twenty years of warm friendship and support,
and Leo Zuckowsky for his care in guiding me through my counsel¬
ing education. And, at Paulist Press, I am especially grateful to Don
Brophy for his patient encouragement.
Chapter 1
Understanding Mary
The meaning of “self” is crucial for pastoral counseling and spir¬

itual direction. But psychologists, philosophers, and theologians
use the term “self,” as well as “ego” and “person,” in so many differ¬
ent ways that confusion is widespread. In order to show in a very
concrete way exactly what is at stake for the practitioner, this chap¬
ter presents a case study illustrating such confusion. We will first
meet Mary, a young woman struggling with her post-conversion
Christian faith. Then we will consider two very different interpreta¬
tions of Mary’s experience, rooted in two conflicting understand¬
ings of the self. The basic point here is to appreciate the need
pastoral counselors and spiritual directors have for a clear and ade¬
quate understanding of the self in order to be able to assist their
clients in the most effective way possible.
MARY’S STORY
Mary, born in 1950, grew up the oldest of four children in a con¬
ventional Christian family. Her parents had met at a state university,
married, and moved to a village in a rural area where her father had
grown up and had many friends. He was a hard worker and a good
provider, but Mary’s mother felt isolated, lonely, and frustrated.
Mary’s arrival about a year into the marriage marked the beginning
of an enduring antagonistic relationship with her mother. Mary’s
9
10 THE DESIRING SELF
father was emotionally closed, and she never felt that she knew him
very well. As a little girl Mary spent a lot of time alone in her room,
playing records and reading. She never felt good about herself,
quarrelled constantly with her mother, and from a very early age
entertained thoughts about killing herself. Never comfortable at
any of several schools, Mary went off to college at seventeen.
Mary attended a private college in the Midwest for a year, then
went to California and enrolled in a big state university, but dropped
out of that after a short time, too. She did not go back to school, but
stayed close to college campuses, not knowing what she wanted to
do with her life, except that she wanted to find truth and meaning,
to love and be loved. Mary spent the next few years experimenting
with illicit drugs, sex, and the occult. After a failed relationship, an
auto crash, a shoplifting arrest, and a suicide attempt, Mary had hit
rock bottom. While she was recuperating from her suicide attempt,
the Lord began to show her that all her unhappiness resulted from
her violation of divine law. Mary’s realization was vague at first, but
about three weeks after her suicide attempt she had an exceptional
spiritual experience on LSD. Though it involved no sense of Jesus
Christ as Lord, this experience revealed to Mary that “our only pur¬
pose on earth is to worship and glorify the Lord....” After several
months of seeking within Eastern religions and the occult for per¬
fect knowledge of a way to God, Mary began to doubt this gnostic
approach, and was struck by a passage in 2 Timothy 3: 1-7. This
was one of many scriptural references listed in a letter from her
younger brother Ron, who had recently become a Christian. Mary,
then twenty-two, was “convicted of sin.” Ron’s unexpected arrival
home for Christmas a few days later led to Mary’s decision to
“believe in Jesus Christ and follow him.”
After her conversion, Mary had a series of devastating experi¬
ences in various small Christian communities. She also became
obsessed with the idea of finding a husband, and was dismissed
from one community as a result of her declared but unrequited love
of a member she felt God meant her to marry. This rejection was
particularly painful because Mary had experienced very positive
relationships with other community members. Elders of other
communities found Mary unsubmissive to authority, and she felt
generally miserable as she wandered from one community to
another for some two years.
UNDERSTANDING MARY 11
Mary finally found a community that seemed very promising,

but after a short time Harry, one of the community’s original mem¬
bers, returned after a falling-away. Mary and Harry shared a history
of rejection and a great need for relationship. Mary became more
and more involved with Harry, and less and less with the commu¬
nity and its ministry. Within four months Mary and Harry were
married, but the union was an immediate disaster, as Harry soon
turned from Jesus to drugs and other women. Yet the marriage
dragged on (and off) for three very difficult years before Mary
finally was able to let go, accepting that the Lord was absolving her
of her marriage commitment.
The divorce was finalized about the time Mary gave birth to her
second child, and as soon as she was able to travel Mary returned
with her children to her parents’ home, where she met a loving wel¬
come. This put Mary in proximity again to her earlier unrequited
love, and hope for possibilities in that direction was rekindled.
Mary was particularly excited that her search for a new church had
led her to a pastor who was a good friend of the fellow’s pastor. She
felt a great need to settle the question. In general, Mary felt a strong
desire for a deeper relationship with the Lord and for a purpose
worth committing herself to—if not a happy marriage, perhaps a
form of God’s work like Christian education—but she also recog¬
nized a real need for a greater source of self-worth.
FOWLER’S INTERPRETATION
Mary’s story is featured prominently in James Fowler’s Stages of
Faith.1 Fowler reports that over the next three years Mary’s life
moved in a much more positive direction, with a significant
increase in her sense of self-worth and happiness. But we will leave
her story where it was at the end of the last paragraph, as that is the
point where Fowler’s interview ends and his analysis begins. The
present summary, of course, lacks the richness of detail and verba¬
tim of Fowler’s lengthy interview report. Fowler introduced Mary
to his readers in order to illustrate the various dimensions of the
structural stages in his faith development theory. He found Mary’s
story especially interesting because of her conversion experience.
Fowler’s analysis focuses on the years following Mary’s conversion,
and locates her in the third of his six stages-Synthetic-Conven-

tional faith. In the following paragraphs we will consider each cate¬
gory of Fowler’s analysis very briefly in order to see why he
characterized Mary’s faith as Stage 3. Fowler’s categories aim at
uncovering how one “faiths,” not the content of one s beliefs. Later,
in Chapter 6, we will examine all of Fowler’s faith stages in the con¬
text of fully personal development.
Of his seven analytic categories, Fowler begins with Locus of
Authority. Here Fowler inquires about where Mary turned for guid¬
ance in her decisions, for approval in her beliefs and values. He
looks first at Mary’s pre-conversion years, when she seemed ori¬
ented to the conventionally held countercultural values of the six¬
ties. When these failed for her, Mary adopted for a while what
Fowler calls a stubborn intellectuality. He suggests that these years
(17-22) can be characterized in terms of a counterdependent, anti-
establishment stance, neither reflective, systematic, nor critical.
Mary’s first positive relation to authority occurs in her reference to
2 Timothy 3: 1-7, early in her conversion experience. Here, charac¬
teristically, Mary was attracted by a subjectively meaningful pas¬
sage without any critical attention to its textual, historical, or
theological context. Also, and again characteristically, the passage’s
power for Mary was connected to her brother Ron, who became her
most dependable guide in discovering God’s will. Ron’s influence
was the strongest, but there were also other members of the various
Christian communities who shared authority for Mary in interpret¬
ing God’s will, Mary’s supreme external locus of authority. Mary’s
locus of authority seems most clearly described by Stage 3: “Con¬
sensus of valued groups and in personally worthy representatives
of belief-value traditions.” In her countercultural stance Mary had
moved beyond Stage 2 “incumbents of authority roles,” but she just
as clearly had not yet advanced to a Stage 4 locus of authority inter¬
nalized in her own critically informed personal judgment.
Fowler next considers Mary’s Form of World Coherence-to what
degree was she reflective, concerned about internal consistency,
and critically self-conscious in her faith? He suggests that Mary’s
world coherence inhered in two basic images of God: the God who
gives guidance (“I felt that God showed me that I was going to
marry a certain brother at that house”) and the God who rescues
(“The Lord never once forsook me, he was really faithful to me”).
While Mary credited God for guidance in many of her decisions,

she never held God accountable when these turned out disas¬
trously. The patterns of Mary’s images of God went beyond the
“Episodic” and “Narrative-Dramatic” forms of Stages 1 and 2, but
did not yet form the conceptually mediated explicit system of Stage
4. Mary’s pattern was the unquestioned tacit “system” of felt mean¬
ings mediated by images characteristic of Stage 3: God guides,
things go wrong, God rescues.
Fowler turns next to Mary’s Bounds of Social Awareness-what
persons or groups were significant for her faith? Fowler’s answer is
that Mary’s world was limited almost exclusively to “the Lord” and
the members of the small communities with whom she had face-to-
face interpersonal relationships. Mary’s story included virtually no
references to social institutions, or to the class, race, ethnic, and
ideological differences they involve. Mary is clearly beyond Stage 2,
family of origins limits, but just as clearly is not a Stage 4 member
of a self-reflective ideological community. Again, Stage 3, with its
“composite of groups in which one has interpersonal relation¬
ships,” best characterizes Mary’s bounds of social awareness.
The next focus of attention is Mary’s Symbolic Function-the terms,
images, and metaphors she uses in referring to the transcendent. Are
they intended as literal or metaphorical, as one-dimensional or multi-
leveled and multivalent? Are the symbols recognized as symbols,
have they been questioned for conceptually stable meanings? At
times Mary seems to distinguish between symbols like “the Lord,”
“God,” “Jesus Christ,” and “the Spirit,” but she usually uses “the
Lord” to refer to all the persons of the trinity. “The Lord” is clearly a
powerfully emotional symbol for Mary, but it seems just as clear that
she has no explicitly delineated concept of God derived from critical
reflection on the many dimensions of meaning of “the Lord.” Fowler
sees Mary’s Symbolic Function as beyond the magical-numinous,
one-dimensional, literal qualities of Stages 1 and 2, but not yet pos¬
sessing Stage 4’s conceptual, critical distance from symbolic mean¬
ings. Her faith is characterized by Stage 3’s evocative power of
multidimensional symbols.
Since Fowler’s three remaining categories —Form of Logic, Per¬
spective Taking, and Moral Judgment-are based on the theories of
Jean Piaget, Robert Selman, and Lawrence Kohlberg, which we will
be considering later, our treatment here will be very brief. Fowler
thinks that while Mary’s cognitive ability, or Form of Logic, is

clearly beyond what Piaget calls concrete operations, since she can
reflect on her life and generalize about it, it is only at the early for¬
mal (or elementary abstract) level of operations characteristic of
Stage 3, as Mary manifests no critical distance on her self or her
world view. Mary’s Perspective Taking follows the same Stage 3 pat¬
tern. She consistently used the interpersonal form—her attempt to
see things from her mother’s point of view, for example—but she
did not regularly enter the perspectives of others on themselves or
on her viewpoint. The absence of mutuality and a third-person
viewpoint in her Perspective Taking also limited Mary to the Stage
3 Moral Judgment of “interpersonal expectations and concor¬
dance.” As Fowler sees it, Mary has only a fragile and provisional
sense of self, which holds togetherMaut in a real sense is a prisoner
of—the perceived evaluations and images significant others have of
her. Mary has no transcendent “cognitive ego” that can put her
reflective sense of self together in a critical way with her assess¬
ments of others and of others’ evaluations of her.
And this is the problem Fowler has with Mary’s conversion. While
Fowler is convinced that Mary’s experience was a genuine conversion,
he understands it as seriously limited by the weakness in Mary’s
sense of her self at the time. For this interpretation, Fowler adds Erik
Erikson’s psychosocial ages of the life cycle to the structural-develop¬
mental perspective. He finds in Mary’s life story—especially in her
relationship with her mother^uggestions of problems at the early
childhood periods of trust, autonomy, initiative, and competence that
set Mary up for the development of an angry, negative identity in ado¬
lescence, a negative identity reinforced by the countercultural move¬
ment of the 1960s. In the conversion following Mary’s rock-bottom
experience, Fowler sees “previously scattered and ambiguous vectors
of fidelity finding a focus in Jesus Christ.2 At the same time, Mary was
promised that her negative identity and life patterns could be left
behind, as she turned and submitted her will to the will of the Lord.
But, says Fowler, “Mary was a new Christian without a church” in
which her new identity in Christ could take shape. Rather, by encour¬
aging not the transformation but the negation of Mary’s willful self,
the groups Mary lived in alter her conversion only helped to continue
her experience of psychological and spiritual violence. By demanding
the denial of a weak and fragile self, they undercut whatever potential
Mary had, thus preventing growth in either the structuring of her faith
or the strength of her identity. In Fowler’s view, Mary’s conversion
process was short-circuited by the strategy of obliterating her past life.
What Mary needed was a healing recapitulation of the earlier stages of
her faith in light of her new relationship with God. Such prayerful and
imaginative continuation of her conversion process could have sup¬
ported a growth in identity and faith that Mary could bring to inti¬
macy and ministry, rather than search for in them.
FORD-GRABOWSKY’S INTERPRETATION
Having presented a summary of Mary’s story and Fowler’s inter¬
pretation, we turn now to another interpretation from a quite
different perspective. In the context of a critique of Fowler’s
faith development theory Mary Ford-Grabowsky offers a counter¬
interpretation of Mary’s story based on what she considers a more
expansive, “holistic” concept of person.3 In contrast to what she
calls Fowler’s ego psychology, Ford-Grabowsky employs Jung’s psy¬
chological understanding of the self and Hildegard of Bingen’s the¬
ological concept of the inner person.
As Ford-Grabowsky presents Jung, the self is the subject of the
total psyche, conscious and unconscious, whereas the ego is the
center only of consciousness. The self is a “transcendental postu¬
late,” ultimately unknowable, expressed in dream symbolism as a
mandala or as one’s ideal personality. In addition to the collective
unconscious, the self has a personal unconscious, made up not
only of repressed and forgotten materials but also of two arche¬
typal constructs, the negative shadow and the contrasexual
anima/animus. The self is a coniunctio oppositorum, in which a
healthy tension between polarities like unique/universal and
unitemporal/eternal is maintained by a uniting symbol of the tran¬
scendental function.
Hildegard, in Ford-Grabowsky’s presentation, distinguishes
between the outer person and the inner person, reflecting the vari¬
ous dichotomies of the spiritual life in Pauline theology. While the
outer person is characterized by blindness and deafness, a fleshly
intellect, pride, resistance to grace, obliviousness to the demands
of justice, and selfishness or willfulness, the inner person is
marked by special faculties of seeing and hearing, a spiritual intel¬

lect, humility, openness to grace, a sensitivity to justice, and self¬
lessness or a desire to do God’s will. But, at the bottom line, the
inner person’s life of faith is what distinguishes it from the outer
person. Ford-Grabowsky calls the inner person the Christian self,
to distinguish it from the Jungian self.
In contrast to Jung and Hildegard, Fowler is seen as focusing on
the ego and, along with it, cognition, consciousness, and positivity,
while neglecting the self, affect, the unconscious, and negativity. In
summary outline, then, according to this view, Fowler concentrates
on the ego, Jung introduces the fuller reality of the self, and Hilde¬
gard goes beyond both by shifting the focus to the Pauline inner
person or Christian self. In this context, Ford-Grabowsky’s key
point is that since only Hildegard’s inner person experiences Chris¬
tian faith, and since Fowler considers only the ego and not the inner
person, “then Fowler must be studying some other phenomenon
than faith, and mistakenly naming it ‘faith.’”4 In her view, moreover,
while Fowler’s first four stages concentrate on structures of the ego,
his fifth and sixth stages inadvertently shift the focus to the self. As a
result, Fowler brings together in his faith development theory two
different lines of development—ego and self—that, according to
Ford-Grabowsky, are “logically incapable of combination.”5
Now, in this context, when Ford-Grabowsky looks at Mary, she
sees not one conversion, but two: a conversion from ego to self,
and a conversion from self to Christian self. In this view, Mary, as a
result of her spiritual experience while taking LSD, was trans¬
formed from an unbeliever into a believer. Through this transforma¬
tion she attained religious faith, but not Christian faith, as her
belief was in a monistic, not triune, God. This conversion repre¬
sents movement from Fowler’s ego to Jung’s self, but not yet from
Jung s self to Hildegard’s Christian self. Ford-Grabowsky interprets
Mary s next several months as a journey of the Jungian self, a gnos¬
tic search for perfect knowledge of the God within.
Mary s second conversion, from self to Christian self, centered
on her experience in reading 2 Timothy 3: 1-7 and on conversa¬
tions with her brother Ron. She now believed in the triune God of
Christian faith, God both immanent and transcendent. According
to Ford-Grabowsky, Mary’s double conversion illustrates Hilde¬
gard s view of the dynamics of faith: as an egocentric outer person,
Mary was incapable of faith, but as a transcended inner person she

became capable of faith. Mary’s “progress along the ego/self/Chris¬
tian self axis was accompanied by progress from unbelief to belief
in God, and from belief in God to belief in the trinity.”6
Looking at Mary’s post-conversion life, Ford-Grabowsky thinks
that Fowler, regarding Mary as a case of arrested development in
faith, fails to appreciate the life of grace that was unfolding within
and bringing her closer to Christ. In Ford-Grabowsky’s estimation,
Mary’s post-conversion life exemplified two key factors in Hilde-
gard’s understanding of the Christian self: Christian faith and
Christian character. Ford-Grabowsky sees Mary’s faith as strong
and unshakable because even the most bitter suffering during her
marriage did not make her doubt the Lord’s goodness and faithful¬
ness. As evidence of Mary’s growth in Christian character, Ford-
Grabowsky cites examples of Mary’s imitation of Christ’s virtues:
fortitude, obedience, forgiveness, understanding, love. For
instance, Ford-Grabowsky sees fortitude, one of the gifts of the
Holy Spirit, in Mary’s remarkable endurance in her commitment to
both Christ and the church despite the emotional abuse she suf¬
fered from church members, and in her struggle to stay faithful to a
marriage that became impossibly difficult. In short, Ford-
Grabowsky perceives in Mary “neither the egocentricity of the
‘outer person,’ nor the sub-Christian beliefs of the Jungian self”;
Mary exemplifies, rather, the “inner person” alive in Christ.7
Now, according to Ford-Grabowsky’s interpretation of Fowler’s
perspective, “Fowler sees Mary as a case of retarded development
in faith who occupies only stage 3 while she ought chronologically
to be at stage 4.”8 This happens, in Ford-Grabowsky’s view, because
Fowler confuses the distinction between ego development (Stages
1-4) and spiritual development (Stages 5-6), and tries to integrate
the two in one theory of faith development. Because of this confu¬
sion, Ford-Grabowsky claims that Mary can be shown to be simul¬
taneously at (ego) Stage 3 and (spiritual) Stage 5 of faith
development—an internal contradiction. To Ford-Grabowsky’s eye,
Mary’s self, actualized by grace, exhibits the characteristics of
Fowler’s Stage 5, while her fragmented ego looks like Stage 3. Actu¬
ally, as she says, Ford-Grabowsky thinks that the characteristics of
Fowler’s Stage 5 (knowing one’s shadow, a willingness to surren¬
der defenses, a knowledge of the opposites, a coherence of the
imperative and the indicative in the moral life, and a relatedness to

being) are qualities of Jungian self-actualization. Thus Fowler’s the¬
ory tracks the development of the ego and of the Jungian self, but
not of the Christian self whose faith and character Mary exempli¬
fies. To underscore the logical flaw she perceives in Fowler’s theory,
Ford-Grabowsky suggests that perhaps Fowler needs to add a sev¬
enth stage to his theory in order to account for the development of
the Christian self possible with grace. She immediately points out,
of course, that Mary would then—absurdly—be at Stage 3 (ego),
Stage 5 (self), and Stage 7 (Christian self)! For Ford-Grabowsky,
then, Fowler’s case study of Mary both exposes his limited concept
of person and thus of faith, and at the same time presents a power¬
ful example of growth in authentic Christian faith.
CONCLUSION
We have now seen two very different views of Mary’s develop¬
ment and conversion. While much more could be said about these
two perspectives on Mary, and especially about Ford-Grabowsky’s
interpretation of Fowler, it is not the purpose of this chapter to
argue for one or the other, or even to referee the dispute. But this is
the place to stress one key point. Whether or not Ford-Grabowsky
is correct in her judgment that Fowler’s concept of the person is
limited, I think she has put her finger on a basic problem underly-
ing the difference in their interpretations of Mary when she points
to the concept of person.
What separates Fowler and Ford-Grabowsky here is one of the
most complex and difficult issues in psychology, philosophy, and
theology. Terms like “ego,” “self,” and “person” are used regularly
by authors in these fields without any commonly accepted defini¬
tions or understandings of the terms. In the case of the present
authois, we have Ford-Grabowsky bringing peculiarly Jungian
meanings of ego and self to Fowler’s completely different context
oi developmental psychology, where the terms have other mean¬
ings. Moreover, Ford-Grabowsky s use of Jungian categories
appears to have more of a theological than a psychological purpose.
For no sooner does she introduce the Jungian self as a more com¬
prehensive view ot the person than the ego which she attributes to
Fowler, than she makes the next move to Hildegard’s Pauline inner
person, or Christian self, because thejungian self is inadequate, in
her view, to the graced reality of Christian faith. Ford-Grabowsky
takes exception to Fowler’s theory of faith development, therefore,
more for theological than for psychological reasons. Essentially,
although she contrasts thejungian self favorably to what she calls
Fowler’s ego, she finds from her theological perspective that neither
psychological approach is capable of doing justice to the person
graced in Christian faith. For that, in her theological view, only
Hildegard’s Pauline inner person, or Christian sel/will do: a theolog¬
ical, not a psychological, understanding of the person. In other
words, with Fowler we have a strongly psychological approach to
faith development and conversion, while Ford-Grabowsky offers a
heavily theological approach from her own understanding of
Christian faith, a reality she sees as beyond the ability of any psy¬
chological theory to deal with adequately. Ford-Grabowsky makes
her theological leaning clear when she explains her preference for
Hildegard’s inner person over Fowler’s outer person (ego) as the
subject of faith by reminding us that Hildegard’s inner person is
biblical, anchored in Paul.9
Clearly, these sharply conflicting interpretations of Mary carry
significant practical implications for diagnosis and care. And they
indicate that every interpretation of a client’s history and present
condition will be crucially influenced by the interpreter’s under¬
standing of the nature of the human person. Practice, in other
words, is inevitably influenced by theory in a very fundamental
way. It is paramount, therefore, that the practitioner possess the
most adequate theoretical understanding of the human person
possible, in order to make an accurate interpretation of any client’s
situation. The purpose of this book is to construct, for the sake of
good practice, such an understanding of the human person, or, as I
shall say, of the self. We shall be returning to Mary in due course,
but we turn now in the next chapter to the American historical con¬
text of this attempt to provide pastoral counselors and spiritual
directors with a theory of self-transcendence: the radical desire of
the self for both autonomy and relationship, the dual desire to be a
self and to reach out beyond the self to world, others, and God.
Chapter 2
From Self-Denial to
Self-Realization:
An American History
While pastoral counseling as we know it today is essentially a

post-World War II phenomenon, it first appeared earlier in the cen¬
tury with the blossoming of psychology and it can claim American
ancestors in philosophical psychology all the way back to the
Mayflower. In this chapter we will first review the developing inter¬
play between psychology and theology as presented in E. Brooks
Holifield’s history of pastoral counseling in America. Then we will
survey the approaches major authors in the modern pastoral coun¬
seling movement have taken to the psychology-theology question,
noting hints of a solution in terms of self-transcendence. This will
be followed by an examination of the influential contemporary
position developed by Howard Clinebell. Finally, drawing on
resources from these approaches, I will present a brief summary of
an integrated vision of pastoral counseling for self-transcendence—
a vision that, by focusing on psychology and theology as different
interpretations of the single desire for self-transcendence, reveals
the problem of reconciling them as a false one.
IDEALS OF THE SELF THROUGH

FOUR CENTURIES
Following the direction of his book’s subtitle, From Salvation to Self-
Realization, Holifield details the development of pastoral counseling
20
FROM SELF-DENIAL TO SELF-REALIZATION: AN AMERICAN HISTORY 21
in America as a succession of changing ideals of the self: from self-

denial to self-love, from self-love to self-culture, from self-culture to
self-mastery, and from self-mastery to self-realization, with the last
being understood at first as occurring within a trustworthy culture
and later as countercultural.1 We will now follow the historical trail of
these ideals of the self, with their apparent shift from the theological
ideal of self-denial to the psychological ideal of self-realization.
Self-Denial
Sin was a central focus of religious life in seventeenth-century

America. Whatever its interpretation within the different traditions,
sin and salvation from sin was the paramount concern of pastoral
care, the cure of souls. Also common to the various traditions was a
hierarchical view of reality reaching from God down to the lowliest
creature, a view that not only included society and the self within
the cosmos but saw the self (soul) and society as themselves hierar¬
chical microcosms. The pastor had a place within the social hierar¬
chy, and his task was caring for the welfare of souls conceived as
monarchies troubled by rebellion of the self.2 While the “soul” was
an incorruptible spiritual substance created directly by God, for
seventeenth-century clerical psychologists, the “self” meant self-
centeredness, willful egocentricity. Thus selfhood, rather than a
positive psychological state to be realized, was a negative, idolatrous
condition to be overcome by self-denial. In the hierarchical soul,
spiritual growth meant a process of sanctification, and while this
process was empowered by supernatural grace, hierarchical conti¬
nuity allowed for the pastoral application of rational methods of
interpretation and persuasion toward overcoming sinful disorder.
Aspects of Mary’s story suggest that this vision continues today
The eighteenth century saw a continuation of the assumptions
about hierarchical authority, a supernatural order, and the pastoral
use of rational method. But the spiritual upheaval of the Great
Awakening was the occasion for some serious reconsideration of
the hierarchy of the soul’s faculties. The question was not one of
simply reordering the hierarchy of intellect, will, and affections,
but of reconceiving the very structure of the soul. While the anti-
revivalist Old Lights held to a hierarchy in which understanding
was “higher” in importance and value and affections were “lower,”
the revivalist New Lights viewed the soul in terms of surface and
depth, wherein the understanding may be of preliminary impor¬
tance, but is superficial in comparison with the deep affections. In
fact, Jonathan Edwards sought to overcome the dichotomy of the
hierarchical view by insisting on a unified sensible knowledge that
combined understanding and will, an apprehension infused with
affection that engaged the whole person. It was from this deep sen¬
sible knowledge, in Edwards’ view, that religious affections flowed.3
Since everyone agreed that the main function of private pastoral
care was discernment, or the diagnosis of one’s spiritual state, the
different views of the soul and the interrelationship of its faculties
raised a crucial pastoral question. Convinced of the need to pene¬
trate below surface appearances to the soul’s deep affections, New
Light revivalists encouraged the long, agonizing period of inner
turmoil necessary for rebirth of the soul. Rebirth was an arduous,
wrenching experience because it required the breaking of the
proud will, the suppression of the sinfully assertive self. Such con¬
version required self-despair and an intense “conviction of sin.” In
this context, the character of Mary’s conversion and willfulness
seem very familiar. The Old Light ministers, on the other hand,
saw God working in more gentle, gradual ways, and judged con¬
version more by the fruits of a holy life than by the feelings of a
dramatic rebirth. Their pastoral style thus stressed comfort more
than challenge.4
Self-Love
While most pastors of both persuasions still agreed on the

necessity of self-denial, the eighteenth century also saw a growing
infatuation with the self, first among liberal ministers, then even
among some Old Calvinist theologians. Distinguished from selfish¬
ness, self-love and the desire for happiness began to be seen as a
means for encouraging sinners to prepare themselves for saving
grace. Though followers of Edwards saw no middle ground
between total selfishness and total selflessness, the historical tide
was against them, and self-love was soon established as a principle
of pastoral care.3
Where eighteenth-century pastors could not agree on whether
understanding or affections should be given priority, early nineteenth-
century ministers, drawing from theology and psychology, hit upon a

solution in the ideal of a tripartite balance of reason, sentiment, and
will. With sin now seen more as a personal act of will than as a status,
the goal of pastoral conversation was to move the will to a decision for
faithfulness through a judicious use of both rational analysis (“affable
and affectionate interrogation”) and sympathetic silence. Thus
despite an ideal of inner harmony, hierarchic thinking still prevailed
and promoted priority of will, not inner equality.6
Self-Culture
The way to assure that the will would govern a balance within
the self was the formation of habits toward self-control. Since virtue
and self-love were no longer seen as opposed to each other, empha¬
sis on habit and virtue soon extended self-love into an antebellum
ideal of self-culture. Understood as the nurture and enhancement
of one’s actual faculties, self-culture did not possess its own crite¬
rion of values, but required the subordination of the self to God’s
will, and thus was seen in continuity with salvation.7 In Mary’s
small Christian communities great importance was given to the
virtue of obedience.
Self-Mastery
Sometime after the Civil War, writes Holifield, pastoral theolo¬
gians “lost their sense of balance.” And by the turn of the century
the ideal of inner harmony among faculties had given way to an
acute interest in the vitality of human nature. Fascination with
“nature” and “power” led first to a religious appropriation of the lan¬
guage of science and technology. As evolutionary theory empha¬
sized conflict and struggle, the ethical affirmation of self-love and
development of character subtly shifted from an ideal of self-culture
to one of self-mastery: the moral warrior realized ideals through
conflict. Such Christianity called for a “muscular minister.”8
But toward the end of the century the assimilation of the New
Psychology into liberal theology effected yet another shift in
emphasis: from activity to receptivity. William James was a strong
proponent of will and habit, but he also appreciated the impor¬
tance of repose and relaxation, and he focused attention on the
energies of the wider subliminal or subconscious self as the source
of salvation, and on the necessity of surrendering the conscious

ego to these subconscious energies. This psychology, as well as
Freudian and other interpretations of the unconscious, found a
perfect niche in the new liberal restatement of theology in terms of
personal relations, which emphasized communion with an imma¬
nent Person more than conformity to God’s transcendent will. The
New Psychology was warmly welcomed by a theology that located
God’s activity within the subjectivity of faithful Christians. Self-
mastery remained the Christian ideal—the building of character
through the overcoming of powerful vitalities within the self.9
Self-Realization
Holifield characterizes pastoral counseling in the first half of the
twentieth century, when America’s love affair with psychology
really got serious, through the ideal of self-realization, an ideal
understood first in terms of adjustment, later in terms of insight.
The ethic of self-realization was initially an expansion of the
ethic of character, not a justification of the uninhibited expression
of natural desires. The possibility of self-realization, wrote John
Dewey, lay in discovering “that special form of character, of self,
which includes and transforms all special desires.” Because the self
was commonly understood to be an intrinsically social reality, self-
realization was seen as possible only in relation to other selves, and
might even require the sacrifice of “separate” selfhood. Rather than
being anti-institutional, such a social conception of self-realization
included service to social institutions as a necessary element. This
notion of self-realization fitted nicely, therefore, with the other pre¬
vailing idea that the self had to be continually adjusting to a chang¬
ing natural and social environment. As promoted by Dewey,
however, this adjustment was no passive subordination to the envi¬
ronment, but an active engagement that transformed both the envi¬
ronment and the self. Only from such adjusting engagement with
the world did self-realization emerge.10
As powerful as Dewey’s influence had been, the attractiveness of
the metaphor of adjustment was beginning to fade by the mid-
1930s, and pastoral theologians were ready for a new image to
guide their work. By 1939, with the publication of Rollo May’s Art
°I Counseling, the metaphor of “insight” had assumed center stage
in a new play that after the Second World War would become the
pastoral counseling movement we know today.11
For May, who saw human life marked by a conflict between free¬
dom and determination, every counseling problem held moral
implications, but his psychoanalytic commitment rejected as
superficial any appeal to conscious decision. Believing with Alfred
Adler that one who understood truly would probably act rightly,
May saw the task of counseling as offering interpretations that
would lead to insight—not simply rational knowledge, but an
understanding that included a capacity to trust reality.12
From the theological angle, the transition from adjustment to
insight was promoted by the critique of culture made by Paul
Tillich and the Niebuhrs. For one did not recommend adjustment
to cultural and social institutions that stood in constant need of
critique, lest they become idols. With the theological realists, then,
the notion of sin shifted from a false adaptation to the divine to an
idolatrous relationship to cultural values. Counseling would work
toward trusting insight to transcend this idolatry. But in criticizing
culture, theological realism subverted not only adjustment but also
the concept of self-realization attached to it. With those for whom
it was to remain an ideal, therefore, self-realization had to be rede¬
fined as a transcending of social convention, lest it become itself an
idol.13 And thus it was redefined—some would say, with a
vengeance—during the post-war years. Among the leading psycho¬
logical theorists of the new version of self-realization Holilield
highlights Carl Rogers, Karen Horney, and Erich Fromm, social
critics who viewed self-realization as an ethic of individual growth,
against the bureaucratic impositions of social institutions.
Erich Fromm was perhaps the most influential of the critics of
mass culture, with his combination of psychoanalysis and social-
economic critique. Pastoral theologians found his affirmation of
the religious quest and rational conscience reassuring, while appre¬
ciating his powerful criticisms of authoritarian religion and ethics.
Pastoral theologians also found Karen Horney’s criticism of West¬
ern competitiveness as a generator of anxiety very convincing. This
critique of mass culture and its conventions fitted in perfectly with
a simultaneous revolt against morahsm in ethics and theology.
Although many theologians in this movement had little use for the
ideal of self-realization, Paul Tillich was able to use it to bring
together the social and theological critiques in a powerful synthesis

of human and divine imperatives: self-realization was the human
precondition of obedience to the divine command to love.14
Fromm, Horney, and other theorists of self-realization distin¬
guished between a “real” self and a public self. Fromm affirmed the
truly human self behind the pseudo public self as the organism’s
inner drive to actualize its potential toward growth and integration.
Florney focused her criticism on the neurotic “idealized image” the
self created in response to anxiety. This moralistic idealized image
subjected the self to “the tyranny of the should” and trapped it in a
“pride system” veiling self-contempt and alienation. Only the real
self could move toward autonomy, growth, and fulfillment.15
Carl Rogers, with his emphasis on acceptance, was a “natural”
for this context of trust in the self’s capacity for growth and of dis¬
trust of authoritarian institutions and moralism.16 A counselor’s
unconditional acceptance of even the most unacceptable impulses
in clients, as Rogers explained in his 1942 Counseling and Psy¬
chotherapy,17 would give relief from moralistic expectations and
institutional impositions, and would open the way to client self¬
acceptance and self-realization.18 This conviction, infused with a
liberal Protestant spirit and an optimism about human nature with
its ethical concern for self-realization, guided Rogers’ early efforts
at “nondirective” counseling. Responding more to feelings than to
content, the counselor’s acceptance sought the client’s free release
of feelings that would lead to insight, a new perception of inner
impulses. Such insight would foster self-acceptance, leading to
growth.19 So deep was Rogers’ respect for the client’s feelings that,
in his 1951 Client-Centered Therapy, he dropped even clarification of
feelings by the counselor, because it implied the disrespectful
assumption that the counselor knew the client’s feelings better
than the client did.20 Instead, he emphasized the importance of
adopting the client’s “frame-of-reference” through empathy, the
skill Rollo May had seen as the key to good counseling. The coun¬
selor s empathic, nonjudgmental attitude would encourage the
client s inherent tendency to sell-actualization as a social person.21
Rogers’ understanding of acceptance and self-realization, set
within the post-war milieu of cultural critique and antimoralism,
defines the context tor our consideration of the period s major
authors in pastoral counseling: Seward Hiltner, Carroll Wise, Paul
Johnson, and Wayne Oates. Holifield’s fine history has brought us

from seventeenth-century self-denial through self-love, self-culture,
and self-mastery to twentieth-century self-realization. In the next
section we follow the career of this ambivalent and ambiguous con¬
cept in the specific field of pastoral counseling.
SELF-REALIZATION IN MODERN
PASTORAL COUNSELING
Seward Hil trier
Certain books define a field during a critical period. Seward
Hiltner’s Pastoral Counseling, published in 1949, performed that
task for a generation of pastoral counselors. While Hiltner under¬
stood pastoral counseling within the broad aims of the church, he
saw its special atm as “the attempt by a pastor to help people help
themselves through the process of gaining understanding of their
inner conflicts.”22
In order to define his own general perspective on counseling,
Hiltner specified four different views of human nature.23 First was
the social-adjustment view then dominant among secular coun¬
selors: An individual’s problem is the result of an unsatisfactory
adjustment to society. While admitting some truth to this view,
Hiltner saw it as a superficial view that could be detrimental to
counseling. A second view of human nature that Hiltner judged as
gaining in strength among counselors was the inner-release view.
Represented in very different ways by Freud, Jung, Rank, Horney,
and Rogers, this view posits, beyond an individual’s ability to
adjust to society, a deep inner need that demands release. As sym¬
pathetic as Hiltner is with the more adequate versions of this view,
he feels that more is needed—a more that takes the form of an
objective ethics. This third view, then, asserts a criterion of basic
human (not merely biological) needs, for example, fellowship,
whose fulfillment are demanded by the essential core of human
nature. A Christian sees this objective ethical character of the
human condition as created and supported by God. From this
Christian theological view, positive potentialities of personality are
seen as having their source in Divine Grace, not as futile sparks in a
dark universe. This last Christian perspective is broad and deep

enough to include an appreciation of the necessary strengths of the
other views as well as a recognition of their limitations.
In terms of method, Hiltner summarizes his approach in five
points.241) The counseling process focuses on the parishioner’s sit¬
uation and feelings about it; 2) the pastor aims at understanding
those feelings and communicating that understanding; 3) the pas¬
tor helps to clarify conflict in feelings; 4) the counseling relation¬
ship includes special freedoms for the parishioner (for example,
from inappropriate moral judgment) as well as certain limitations
(for example, the pastor gives help toward self-help, not answers or
directions); 5) the process should include explicit consolidation of
insights and clarification gained, in an attempt to enlarge the
parishioner’s perspective.
For Hiltner, of course, all this is done within a context of depth
psychology that includes three basic assumptions.25 1) All conduct
has meaning; 2) this meaning is both conscious and unconscious;
3) growth results from the constructive handling of conflict, not
from its absence.
It is possible, in all of this, to see not only the Rogerian approach
assumed into a theological context, but also—especially in the
Christian version of objective ethics—an understanding of self-
realization moving in the definite direction of self-transcendence
(though the term itself is not used).
Carroll Wise
Carroll Wise continued the Rogerian influence on pastoral

counseling with an emphasis, in his 1951 Pastoral Counseling: Its
Theory and Practice, on the need for an attitude on the part of the
counselor ot neither approval nor disapproval, but of acceptance.26
Wise even took this attitude beyond Rogers and Hiltner, however,
because he realized that when acceptance expresses a counselor’s
genuine feelings it can lead to a truly creative relationship, which
he alfirmed as the essential therapeutic element.
The immediate function of the counseling relationship, in Wise’s
view, is the strengthening of the self, which cannot face its conflicts
alone. Thus, in addition to acceptance, a second key quality of the
counseling relationship is Ireedom, which encourages a person to
become an autonomous, self-determining agent with his or her own

freedom to engage spontaneously in creative work and human rela¬
tionships. The third quality of the counseling relationship that Wise
highlights is mutuality, which keeps a counselor with a person, nei¬
ther ahead nor behind. Mutuality gives both parties the experience
of growing together in insight and understanding. For Wise, then,
the acceptance, freedom, and mutuality of relationship all add up to
the conclusion that the essence of counseling is communication, the
conveying of experience in terms of its meaning—meaning that
invariably involves pain, suffering, and other emotional wounds.27
Like Rogers, too, Wise sees insight as the goal of counseling-
insight that includes perception of relationships in previously
known facts, the acceptance of self, and the possibility of choice.
Insight, of course, is an emotional grasp of one’s self and one’s con¬
flicts, not to be confused with intellectual explanation. Insight, for
Wise, is the result of an emotional relationship that permits the
communication of life experience, the release of negative feelings,
and the growth of positive ones. Insight involves grasping oneself as
a whole being at the center of personality with one’s meanings and
values; it includes seeing oneself in relationship to other persons;
and it also extends to reaching out beyond one’s finite dimensions
to the larger universe, to God. Insight, then, in the other words of
this book’s thesis, is the real possibility of self-transcendence, the
overcoming of egocentricity that, as Wise explains, makes prayer in
the dominant Christian mood possible: “Thy will be done.”28
Paul Johnson
The theme of relationship highlighted by Carroll Wise was con¬
tinued in a major way from the viewpoint of interpersonal psychol¬
ogy in Paul Johnson’s 1953 Psychology of Pastoral Care. Relationships
of mutual appreciation are the key to the pastoral vocation, in John¬
son’s view. Such relationships involve trusting perception, empathy,
and communication.29
Johnson developed his pastoral view of relationships from an
interpersonal psychology based on seven axioms: 1) persons are cen¬
tral; 2) every person confronts other persons in interactive relation¬
ships; 3) motives respond to significant persons; 4) goals are valued
by persons; 5) values multiply in sharing; 6) spontaneity is creative;
7) persons grow through love.30 In this interpersonal context John¬

son defines pastoral care as a “religious ministry to individual per¬
sons in dynamic relationships, arising from insight into essential
needs and mutual discovery of potentialities for spiritual growth.”31
As may be apparent from the foregoing, Johnson was at this time
in complete agreement with the Rogerian nondirective approach.
He proposed the label “responsive counseling” simply to stress the
active role of the counselor in nondirective counseling. The respon¬
sive counselor is oriented to the person, to the relationship, and to
God, the creator of all true growth. So, while self-realization is at
the heart of Johnson’s perspective on the person (“the greatest
thing about a person is his capacity to grow and outgrow”), it is a
self-realization intrinsically defined by an interpersonal context of
relationship. By insisting that self-realization occurs only in rela¬
tionships, Johnson is insisting that self-realization is what in this
book we are calling self-transcendence.32
Wayne Oates
The title of Wayne Oates’ 1951 The Christian Pastor clues us to
expect a significantly different orientation. While strongly influ¬
enced by psychology and by Rogerian counseling in particular,
Oates was deeply rooted in the Christian church of his rural south¬
ern culture. Beyond the pastor’s personal influence, Oates empha¬
sized the symbolic influence the pastor has by reason of the way
the pastor’s role and function have seeped deeply into the con¬
sciousness of Christians over centuries. The pastor symbolizes
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as emissary of the church. Thus, not
surprisingly, The Christian Pastor is a book on total pastoral care,
with only one of eight chapters devoted to the subdivision of “Pas¬
toral Counseling and Psychotherapy." As much as he appreciated
the importance and necessity of psychology for the ministry, Oates
did not give blanket endorsement to the notion of self-realization
as the goal of pastoral counseling: “The central objective of all pas-
toial care and personal counseling is that 'Christ be formed’ in the
personality of the individuals who seek help.”33
Oates distinguishes the counseling process into five major
phases: 1) preparatory; 2) relaxation and rapport; 3) listening and
exploration, 4) reconstruction and guidance; and 5) follow-up and
experimentation. The goal of the third phase, clearly influenced by

Rogers, is that the person achieve insight into his or her difficulties
and acceptance of the ambivalences of life. For Oates, of course,
problems of self-acceptance are basically of a religious character.
And the forming of Christ in the personality is a Christian way of
speaking of what I mean by self-transcendence.34
SELF-REALIZATION IN CONTEXT:
REVISIONING PASTORAL COUNSELING
Despite the dominant influence of Rogers and the theme of self-
realization after the war, Oates’s cautious approach became more
common among pastoral counselors by the end of the fifties as
they found it more and more difficult to accept a simple equation
between self-realization and the traditional Christian ideal of spiri¬
tual growth. As popular culture became more and more preoccu¬
pied with a narrow, private ideal of self-realization as the fulfillment
of the self’s every wish, pastoral theologians looked for a way to
distinguish pastoral counseling that would at the same time set lim¬
its to self-realization.
The Contexts of Pastoral Counseling

The defining element that many theologians hit upon, led by a
revisionist Seward Hiltner, was context, which Holifield gives a
threefold specification.35 From the psychological perspective, the
context was the interpersonal relationship, of which Harry Stack
Sullivan was a favorite theorist. The social self was regarded as per¬
haps the best way of setting limits to self-realization and correlating
it with the traditional Christian ideal of spiritual growth. From the
theological viewpoint, interpersonal psychology needed a larger
context, and God was characterized as the ultimate context in
which self-realization occurs. In this context of God’s activity in the
world, it was recognized that genuine self-realization required self-
denial. And when, from a practical orientation, it was asked how
these theological insights would actually affect counseling, the
answer was in terms of the church as context, with its distinctive
setting, expectations, relationships, and aims and limitations.
Cline bell’s “Revised Model "
While the continuing work of Hiltner, Wise, Johnson, and Oates

contributed significantly to the revisioning of pastoral counseling
through the sixties, the dominant influence in the movement was
Howard Clinebell’s 1966 Basic Types of Pastoral Counseling.
Dissatisfied with the inadequacy of the prevailing Rogerian-
psychoanalytic approach for pastoral counseling, Clinebell set out
to provide a “revised model” of “relationship-centered counsel¬
ing.” Employing the contributions of family group therapy, role-
relationship marriage counseling, transactional analysis, crisis
intervention theory, reality therapy, existential psychotherapy, and
ego psychology, Clinebell based his revised model “not on insight-
oriented, uncovering psychotherapy, but on relational, supportive,
ego-adaptive, reality-oriented approaches to therapy.”36
In contrast to the prevailing model of the forties and fifties,
Clinebell wanted to move: 1) from the formal, structured counsel¬
ing interview as the dominant operational model, toward less for¬
mal and structured settings; 2) from the client-centered method as
normative, toward appropriate sustaining, guiding, inspiring, con¬
fronting, teaching, and encouraging methods; 3) from insight as
the central goal, toward enhancing a person’s ability to relate in
mutually need-satisfying ways; from the concepts of 4) uncon¬
scious motivation and 5) childhood roots of adult behavior, toward
conscious material and contemporary relationships (focusing on
the between rather than the within).37
But if Clinebell sought a significant shift in method to a more rela¬
tionship-centered and action-oriented approach, his goal clearly
remained that of self-realization. Agreeing with William Glasser that
inability to fulfill essential personal needs is the basic problem
brought to therapy, Clinebell combined Glasser’s two essential needs
(to love and be loved, and to feel worthwhile) into one: “to experience
authentic love in a dependable relationship.” Derived from this basic
need are others: 1) a sense of worth, 2) responsible living, 3) inner
freedom, 4) a sense of meaning, and 5) a loving, trustful relationship
with God. Thus pastoral counseling helps “people handle their prob¬
lems of living more adequately and grow toward fulfilling their
potentialities...by helping them reduce the inner blocks which pre¬
vent them Irom relating in need-satisfying ways.” By focusing on
growth “toward the fulfillment of [one’s] unique personhood,”

Clinebell clearly sees self-realization as the goal of counseling, but he
includes in self-realization the development of more meaningful rela¬
tionships with neighbor and God.38
Because he understands the church’s purpose as the increase of
the love of God and neighbor, Clmebell sees sound pastoral coun¬
seling, with its aim of helping us to love, as headed in the same
direction as the church. Counseling can help us to overcome the
alienation from ourselves, from others, and from God that is the
essence of sin. Indeed, in Clinebell’s view, the great theological
issues—sin and salvation, guilt and forgiveness, judgment and
grace, spiritual death and rebirth—are at the heart of counseling.
“In a real sense rebirth to wider worlds of meaning and relationship
is the ultimate goal of pastoral counseling.”39 Here we see a fore¬
shadowing not only of our theme of self-transcendence (wider
worlds of meaning and relationship), but also of those special
instances of self-transcendence called conversions (rebirth). Before
developing this theme of self-realization as self-transcendence and
conversion, however, we must consider ClinebeH’s most recent ver¬
sion of the “revised model” in his 1984 Basic Types of Pastoral Care
and Counseling.
The “Re vised Model Re vised

”
Clinebell’s personal and professional experience during the

twenty years between the first and second editions of Basic Types
brought about several important changes in his revision of the
“revised model”—the new holistic liberation-growth model. The
changes, however, are all incorporated into an approach that
emphasizes two of the basic elements of the previous generation:
1) self-realization (growth) in 2) the context of the church’s pas¬
toral care. Among the many changes, I will focus here on those that
relate to the meaning of self-realization.
For the new model the overarching goal of all pastoral care and
counseling is to “liberate, empower, and nurture wholeness cen¬
tered in Spirit.” Because “spiritual and ethical wholeness is the
heart of all human wholeness,” they must be central concerns in
pastoral care and counseling. Integrating both psychological and
theological insight, pastoral care and counseling should be
“holistic, seeking to enable healing and growth in all dimensions

of human wholeness.”40
Clinebell specifies six interdependent dimensions of personal
life that must be included in growth toward wholeness at every
stage of development.41 1) “Enlivening one’s mind”—both left and
right brains-“involves development of all our resources for think¬
ing, feeling, experiencing, envisioning, and creating.” 2) “Revitaliz¬
ing one’s body” means using, experiencing, and enjoying our
bodies more effectively, fully, and lovingly. 3) “Renewing and
enriching one’s intimate relationships” is essential because our per¬
sonalities are formed and transformed in such caring relationships.
4) “Deepening one’s relationship with nature and the biosphere”
requires increased ecological awareness, communion, and caring.
5) “Growth in relation to the significant institutions in one’s life”
demands involvement in the transformation of unjust social, politi¬
cal, and economic structures of violence, exploitation, and oppres¬
sion. 6) “Deepening and vitalizing one’s relationship with God” is
the key to human flowering in all the other dimensions because
coming alive in our relationship with God means coming alive at
the center of our selves where all the dimensions of our being inter¬
sect and are unified. For Clinebell, spiritual wholeness means both
that there is a spiritual dimension in all human problems and that
basic spiritual needs are basic human needs.42
In specifying the various dimensions of wholeness in his libera¬
tion-growth model, and by emphasizing the unifying function of
spiritual wholeness, Clinebell is clearly detailing the many areas in
which we realize our selves through the single, though differenti¬
ated desire for self-transcendence. Just as clearly, he is explicitly
including in his perspective not only the concerns of pastoral
counseling but also those long dealt with in the Catholic tradition
under the rubric of spiritual direction.
SELF-REALIZATION AS SELF-TRANSCENDENCE
While major modern authors on pastoral counseling like Hiltner,
Wise, and Johnson have emphasized self-realization, they have also
appreciated its ambiguity, and struggled with the issue of relating it
to a traditional ideal of spiritual growth that includes the necessity
of self-denial. Can psychological ideals of self-realization, self-

fulfillment, and self-actualization be reconciled with traditional
Christian ideals of self-denial, self-surrender, and self-sacrifice?
Clinebell clearly opts for an affirmative answer in his holistic
emphasis on growth, but assumes the possibility of reconciliation
rather than providing a critical explanation of it.
Self-Realization and Self-Denial

If self-realization means self-fulfillment in the narcissistic sense
of satisfying one’s every wish, then it must be rejected as not only
anti-Christian but antihuman. Such fulfillment is an impossible
illusion. If self-denial means denial or sacrifice of the true self and
its radical exigencies, then it must be rejected as not only antihu¬
man but anti-Christian. Such denial would sacrifice the possibility
of love. But we must affirm self-realization as the fulfillment of the
exigencies of our true selves, just as we must affirm self-denial as
the rejection of any interest, desire, or wish of the self that inter¬
feres with the realization of our true selves.
Self-Transcendence
Self-transcendence, incorporating both authentic self-realization
and genuine self-denial, embodies the radical dynamism of the
Christian spiritual life. Through self-transcendence the self is not
sacrificed, but realized in its authentic being. But the realization of
the true self in its drive for meaning, truth, value, and love rejects
any self-centered striving for happiness through fulfillment, requir¬
ing that one empty oneself (even losing one’s life) in the loving ser¬
vice of the neighbor. Self-transcendence, then, insists on the
paradoxical view that authentic self-realization results not from an
attempt to fulfill one’s wishes, but from a movement beyond one¬
self in an effort to bring about the good of others. Here a brief sum¬
mary of the dimensions of self-transcendence will suggest the
fuller discussion to follow in Chapter 5.
Self-transcendence occurs in our effective response to the radi¬
cal desire of the human spirit for meaning, truth, value, and love.
This drive manifests itself in a series of interconnected questions.
Our questions seek meaning in experience through understand¬
ing, but not just any meaning; through reflective questions we also
seek evidence to establish truth in realistic judgments. And in prac¬

tical matters, judgments lead to questions about value: what am I
going to do? Finally, our decisions must be supported by the
matrix of affectivity that surrounds and permeates the questioning
process: to what shall I commit myself in love? Every achievement
of creative understanding, realistic judgment, responsible decision,
and generous love is an instance of self-transcendence. Such cogni¬
tive, moral, and affective self-transcendence to which the gospel
calls us in service of the neighbor—and nothing less—is the crite¬
rion of authentic self-realization.
Conversion
While instances of self-transcendence occur in every life, the
gospel calls us to lives of self-transcendence-thus the issue of con¬
version, of the transformation of our selves into dependable, life-
giving springs of self-transcending discoveries, decisions, and
deeds. Here I will anticipate a fuller discussion of conversion in
Chapter 7 by briefly outlining four dimensions of Christian con-
version-special instances of self-transcendence that transform our
lives in fundamental ways.
In moral conversion we shift our criterion of decision from self-
centered satisfaction to neighbor-oriented value. But we can meet
this challenge to decide for value consistently only when we fall in
love. Only through the affective conversion of our selves into
beings-in-love can we escape our egocentric gravity and regularly
decide to act in accord with our best judgments. But our best judg¬
ments may be bound to the conventional values of family, peers, or
society. Only in cognitive conversion do we discover that the crite¬
rion of the true and the valuable is in our own self-transcending
judgments and not somewhere “out there." Transcendence of
socially and culturally limited values requires such critical appro¬
priation of our own cognitive and moral powers. Still, even after
years of seriously striving to live a life of value, one can ask: why be
moral at all? As Job discovered, only the radical reorientation of life
that allows God to move from the periphery to the center affords a
lasting answer to this devastating question. Such a surrender of the
illusion of absolute autonomy is possible only for the person who
totally falls in love with a mysterious God. In this radical religious
conversion, the self’s autonomy is relativized and one’s life is

recognized as the gift it is. By liberating our capacities for self¬
transcendence in every dimension, pastoral counseling and spiri¬
tual direction enable us to respond to the gospel call to such radi¬
cal conversion of life.
In the concept of self-transcendence, pastoral counselors and
spiritual directors can integrate psychology and theology by seeing
them as two complementary interpretations of the single radical
desire of the human spirit. By reaching beyond ourselves through
creative understanding, realistic judgment, responsible decision, and
generous love, we both realize our authentic being (true self) and
respond to the gospel’s call to loving service of the neighbor. A psy¬
chology that understands self-realization as self-transcendence and a
theology that recognizes the gospel as a call to self-transcendence
require no reconciliation, only the discovery of their intrinsic unity
as interpretations of the same fundamental human dynamism for
self-transcendence.
But such discovery of self-transcendence as integrating psycho¬
logical and theological perspectives for a unified pastoral counsel¬
ing and spiritual direction requires that we understand exactly
what we mean by “self,” one of the most common, but slippery
terms in both ordinary and technical language. This will be the
task of the following chapter.
Chapter 3
Understanding the Self
We have tracked the changing ideals of the self through the his¬
tory of the American pastoral counseling movement, but to this
point we have not identified exactly what this self is that has so pre¬
occupied the pastoral counseling movement. For the most part, the
authors presume various common-sense understandings of the self,
and focus on the question of what stance to take toward it—denial,
love, mastery, control, realization. The historical framework has
given us some context for situating the different interpretations of
Mary’s development and conversion that we examined in Chapter 1,
but terms like “self,” “ego,” and “person” still remain to be clarified.
This chapter will consider these and other terms, like “subject,” the
“I,” and the “me,” in order to establish precisely what we mean
by “self” when we speak not only of self-denial, self-realization,
and self-transcendence, but also of the especially problematic
“sell-love.”
Without a precise understanding of the self, the meaning of self¬
transcendence will remain vague, leaving pastoral counseling and
spiritual direction without an integrated theoretical base, and pas¬
toral counselors and spiritual directors without an effective practi¬
cal appreciation of their clients’ radical desires and possibilities.
The dynamic understanding of the self we will work toward must
be complex: multidimensional and interdisciplinary. Integrating
insights from philosophy and theology as well as psychology, it will
be defined in relation to, and include within it, basic meanings of
38
UNDERSTANDING THE SELF 39
difficult terms like person, ego, subject, the “I,” the “me,” identity,
consciousness, the unconscious, character, conscience, and, of
course, desire.
FROM PERSON TO SELF: A BRIEF HISTORY

While the meaning of the term “self” is too elusive to allow us to
begin with a definition, we can start with a clue emerging from the
close connection between self and interior subjectivity. In his Con¬
fessions, Augustine explicated his entry into himself in his search
for a God who was more intimate to him than he was to himself.
But it would be more than a millennium before interiority began to
be plumbed again in a systematic way. Until the modern period the
individual was dealt with less in the interior, subjective, first-person
terms of “self” and more in the external, objective, third-person
terms of “person.” A grasp of the Christian tradition’s meaning of
person, therefore, is essential background for understanding the
self that is central to pastoral counseling and spiritual direction.
The English word “person” reaches back to the Latin persona (per-
sonare, to sound through) and the Greek 7tp6aco7iou (face, actor’s
mask). As a technical term it was first used in early Christian reflec¬
tion on the Trinity and the Incarnation (Tertullian). Boethius pro¬
vided the first philosophical definition: “Persona est naturae rationalis
individua substantia” [A person is an individual substance of a ratio¬
nal nature]. With certain modifications this definition moved
through medieval thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas, Richard of St.
Victor, and Duns Scotus and into modern theological thought, as in
Karl Rahner’s encyclopedia Sacramentum Mundi: “The actual unique
reality of a spiritual being, an undivided whole existing indepen¬
dently and not interchangeable with any other...belongfing] to itself
and...therefore its own end in itself...[with an] inviolable dignity.”1
This basic meaning of “person” emerged from the interaction of
Jewish and Christian religious experience with Greek philosophy. At
the core of this religious experience is the person’s free decision to
respond to God’s invitation to an intimate relationship. The Chris¬
tian attempt to use Greek philosophical concepts such as “nature”
and “substance” for its understanding and articulation of this experi¬
ence gradually effected a transformation of these concepts. From a
metaphysics of being, with its notion of the human individual as an

infinite spirit trapped in a finite body, there developed a Christian
theology of historical experience with its understanding of the per¬
son as an embodied spirit of absolute significance and destined for
resurrection. In this sense, a person is an essentially social being,
constituted precisely as person through its relationship with other
free, independent, historical beings. A person is a concrete unity of
individuality and universality, of immanence and transcendence; it
subsists in itself, but is open to all reality. It is with this meaning of
“person” that the Christian tradition has designated the absolute
mystery that is God as “personal.” Divine life is understood as the
immanent perfection of God’s being realized in a multiple personal
act of knowing and loving. It is this personal God to whom Chris¬
tians are related in faith. And it is in this sense of personal as rela¬
tional that the tradition has understood women and men. to be
created in God’s image and likeness. Indeed, it was the tradition’s
attempt to understand the human and divine dialectically in terms of
each other that led to a meaning of person not only as independent
and intellectual but also as relational and free in self-creative love.
Still, despite the significant development in the meaning of “per¬
son” from Greek philosophy to medieval Christian theology, the
approach remained basically one of treating an essentially first-
person, subjective reality in third-person, objective terms. It was not
until the early modern period that the Augustinian theme of interi-
ority was resumed in a significant way by philosophers like
Descartes and religious thinkers like Pascal.
Descartes, though aware interiorly only of his thinking, assumed
that it required a thinker, a self, which he understood as spiritual sub¬
stance.2 This thinking self became his first principle of philosophy.
Pascal further identified the self with all striving, including feeling and
willing as well as knowing. Locke pressed Descartes’ doubt to include
even the permanent, substantial nature of the self, which he under¬
stood to be the person as perceived by herself or himself: “I am a self
only for myself and a person for others.” The existence of the self, the
seat of personal identity, requires continuing consciousness of oneself
Irom past into present.5 Hume also challenged the substantial nature
ol the self, finding it impossible to intuit a permanent self. Try as he
might to catch himself independent of a particular perception of heat
or cold, of pain or pleasure, he could never observe anything but the

perception.
Further emphasis on subjectivity came from Kant, Hegel, and
Kierkegaard. Kant distinguished between the phenomenal self,
which, like other phenomena, can be known, and the noumenal
self, which can only be inferred as a basic condition of knowing.
Only in moral consciousness of freedom and duty does Kant’s true
ethical self know itself. For Hegel, the self was revealed through a
process of differentiating self from non-self and discovering its
presence in the non-self. Self-consciousness is reached only by the
self externalizing or alienating itself. Kierkegaard also focused on
alienation, but alienation of the self from God. The self constitutes
itself by freely accepting its dependence on God; despair comes
from estranging oneself from God. Pugno, ergo sum best suggests
the reality of the self constituted through the will’s struggle to
reach the authentic, religious level of existence.
Later authors understood the self to have several aspects.
William James understood the self as the sum of all that one knows
oneself to be. Self-awareness is a stream, revealing two aspects: an
“I,” or experienced continuity, and a “me,” which includes many
selves rooted in bodily existence. G. H. Mead also understood the
self as twofold: the selves of the “me,” which result from social
interaction, and the fictitious “I,” which is always off-stage. Martin
Buber saw the self constituted in the same dialogic way, but
extended the dialogue to include nature and God. H. Richard
Niebuhr rooted his theology of the responsible self in a similar tri¬
adic pattern of dialogue.
Mainstream empirical psychology did not follow James in his
interest in the self. Existential-humanistic psychology has focused
on the self, however; and certain psychoanalytic theorists have
given major attention to the related concept of the ego and, more
recently, even to the self. Existential-humanists such as Abraham
Maslow, Carl Rogers, and Rollo May see the self as a set of radically
human potentials that must be actualized, realized, or fulfilled
through striving for an immanent ideal. Neo-Freudians like Karen
Horney, Heinz Hartmann, and Erich Fromm helped move a more
fully personal ego than Freud’s to the center of the psychoanalytic
stage. And Erik Erikson has not only traced the psychosocial devel¬
opment of ego-identity, but also distinguished and related the
unconscious ego that integrates experience and the conscious “I,”

the live, numinous center of awareness. Psychoanalytic object-
relations theorists and self psychologists such as D. W. Winnicott,
Ronald Fairbairn, Otto Kernberg, and Heinz Kohut have focused
on the development of the true self in the context of supportive
interpersonal relationships, especially the relationship between
infant and nurturing parent. Victor Frankl, an existentialist with a
psychoanalytic background, centers on meaning as the constitutive
reality of the self. In his view, self-actualization is not something
that can be successfully sought after; self-actualization is only pos¬
sible as a side-effect of striving for self-transcendence.
This reference to self-transcendence in Frankl’s perspective sig¬
nals the completion of our overview of the historical development
from person to self and the transition of our considerations to a
constructive theory of the self. As we move forward we will retain
the notion of person along with that of self, of course, anticipating
a comprehensive perspective in which the objective, third-person
reality of an embodied, historical person will not be replaced but
taken up and transformed by the subjective, first-person interiority
of self. The same person who is observed at a distance is also a self
who is immediately present to itself; “self” adds interiority to “per¬
son.” The constructive phase begins with an attempt to clarify and
situate a particularly difficult term, the “ego.”
EGO: FROM CONSCIOUS TO UNCONSCIOUS

We begin our constructive reflections on the self with a consid¬
eration of the ego because of its importance, its difficulty, and its
peculiar relation to self, person, and the “I.” The term “ego” is
important because of the major role it has played in many and very
different modern philosophies and psychologies. It is difficult
because it has represented, usually without warning, several differ¬
ent realities, both conscious and unconscious. Its relation to self,
person, and the “I” is peculiar because it is a first-person word (like
“I”) used in a third-person manner (like “person”) to represent a
subjective reality (like “self”). If all this were not enough, “ego” is
also a popular word in ordinary language, as in the expression, “He
has a big ego.” Sometimes “ego” seems to be equivalent to “self”; at
other times, as in Jung’s system, the two words definitely point to

different realities. In any case, the two terms are so closely related
that, if we can establish some clarity on what “ego” means, it
should clear part of the conceptual deck for our attempt to con¬
struct a comprehensive understanding of the self.
Etymologically, of course, “ego” is simply the Latin word for “I.”
But that linguistic simplicity masks the term’s complicated and con¬
fusing theoretical history. Although “I” is usually understood as hav¬
ing a first-person, experiential meaning, “ego” has often been used
theoretically as having a third-person, hypothetical meaning. We can
take two examples, one from philosophy and one from psychology.
We have already made reference to Kant’s distinction between
the phenomenal self and the noumenal self. One of the great
philosophers directly influenced by Kant was the German Tran¬
scendental Idealist, J. G. Fichte. In order to prove that practical,
moral reason is the absolute ground of all knowledge, Fichte postu¬
lated the ego as a supreme principle. From this sovereignly inde¬
pendent ego is deduced all other knowledge. This transcendental
ego is neither self-evident nor even knowable, because it is not an
object of knowledge but rather the condition of any knowledge.
Notice that this ego is not an experienced “I,’’but a postulated,
hypothetical entity considered necessary for the existence of
empirical self-consciousness. We shall leave this meaning of “ego”
to the historians of philosophy.
Over a century later, from the entirely different perspective of
psychoanalysis, Freud also postulated a hypothetical ego. Although
he first used the term in the sense of the conscious “I” or self,
Freud’s truly distinctive meaning of “ego” is the hypothetical entity
(or, more accurately, group of functions) he later postulated as the
central player in his tripartite structural theory of the unconscious:
id, ego, superego. Of the three, the ego may be closest to conscious¬
ness, but Erik Erikson, one of the most influential psychoanalytical
theorists, has insisted on its intrinsically unconscious nature: “We
become aware of its work but never of it.”4 Indeed, as an uncon¬
scious inner organizer of experience, the ego does for us what we
could never consciously do for ourselves. Erikson explains: “Only
after we have separated the T and the selves from the ego can we
consign to the ego...the domain of an inner ‘agency’ safeguarding
our coherent existence by screening and synthesizing...all the
impressions, emotions, memories, and impulses which try to enter

our thoughts and demand our action, and which would tear us
apart if unsorted and unmanaged by a slowly grown and reliably
watchful screening system.”5
While it is this meaning of “ego” as an inner organizer of experi¬
ence that I will be carrying forward as we move on in this study, for
the sake of clarity we should briefly contrast it to Jung’s use of the
term which we saw in Chapter 1. The contrast here is striking
because Jung explicitly defines “ego” as the center of conscious¬
ness. Though this meaning of “ego” differs radically from Freud’s,
it is a particularly straightforward use of the word, equivalent to “I.”
Indeed, in another system Jung’s “ego” might be named “self,” but
not so in Jung’s, because in contrast to Jung’s quite ordinary mean¬
ing of “ego” is his rather extraordinary definition of “self” (usually
capitalized, “Self”). For Jung the Self is the subject of the total psy¬
che, both conscious and unconscious. Postulated rather than expe¬
rienced, the Self is Jung’s entry in the hypothetical field, an ideal
personality hinted at in the dream symbolism of a mandala. In con¬
trast to Jung’s Self as “transcendental postulate,” “self” in this
study will refer to a conscious, immediately experienced reality.
And “ego,” differing from both Fichte and Jung, will designate
Freud’s inner agency, the unconscious organizer of experience, a
dimension of the total personal reality that, as conscious, is the
self’s “I.” In short, from here on, I will use “ego” to mean the
unconscious side of the self’s “I.”
Before moving ahead, we should pause briefly to consider one
particularly significant interpretation of the ego as an uncon¬
scious, inner organizer of experience, an interpretation by Her¬
bert Fingarette that will foreshadow and complement my
understanding of the self in its radical desire for transcendence.
Working from a psychoanalytic perspective, Fingarette under¬
stands the ego as a fundamental unifying drive toward meaning
and integration. Distinct from the pleasure principle, this
autonomous drive is what Freud called “the irresistible advance
toward a unification of mental life.” When the typical client comes
to therapy because she or he is unhappy and finds no meaning in
the unhappiness, the analyst addresses the lack ol meaning as
well as the unhappiness, lest the therapy result only in adjustment
and not in personal integration.6
Given this view of ego as a unifying drive toward meaning, Fin-

garette is able to specify a structural meaning of anxiety as the
breakdown of this drive. Ego is the drive toward integration, organi¬
zation, meaning; anxiety is the failure of ego in this drive: disinte¬
gration, disorganization, meaninglessness. Anxiety is a uniquely
provocative threat to ego, a threat that disrupts central ego integrity.
Anxiety is ego-disorganization, ego-disintegration. Ego and anxiety
are two sides of the same com. When the drive for meaning func¬
tions properly, it is called “ego”; when it is threatened, we speak of
anxiety. Anxiety in this structural sense sometimes produces the
characteristic affect of anxiety-feelings. Following Karen Horney,
Fingarette distinguishes two general kinds of anxiety: neurotic anx¬
iety occurs when the ego falters in a normal environment; normal
anxiety occurs when the ego fails in the face of universal human
events-illness, catastrophe, death. Later we will see how the ego
develops; but now we can note that the form of anxiety at any point
in personal development is related to the kind of ego-integrity that
is threatened—for example, separation-anxiety when the ego is pri¬
marily oriented to the relationship with the nurturing parent.7
Now that we have considered the unconscious, and postulated
ego as a unifying drive for meaning, we will shift in the following
sections to the conscious, experienced dimension of the self, the
dialectic of the “I” and the “me.” Before long we will be meeting the
drive for meaning again as it emerges as a central dimension of the
radical desire for self-transcendence within the conscious realm of
the self.
THE CONSCIOUS “I”: THE SELF-AS-SUBJECT

Having located the ego in the unconscious dimension of the
self, we must turn our attention to its conscious partner, the sub¬
jective “I,” and then to the “Fs” objective alter, the “me.” We must
not expect an easy time of it, for over the centuries few philo¬
sophical or psychological concepts have proven as resistant to
clarification. Nothing seems more familiar, more intimate than
the “I,” yet for philosophical and psychological inquiry nothing
has been more elusive. The subjective “1” is always one step ahead
of its pursuers, leaving only the objective “me” for the analyst’s
net. We can reflect on the “me,” but the “I,” precisely as subject,
can only be experienced.
Despite the emphasis psychoanalyst Erik Erikson understand¬
ably gives to the unconscious ego, he insists just as firmly on the
significance of the conscious “I”: “One should be really decisive
and say that the T is all-conscious, and that we are truly conscious
only insofar as we can say I and mean it.” For Erikson, the “I” is
“the ground for the simple verbal assurance that each person is a
center of awareness in a universe of communicable experience, a
center so numinous that it amounts to a sense of being alive, and
more, of being the vital condition of existence.”8 On this sense of
“I” Erikson refers us to William James, quoting a key passage from
his Psychology: The Briefer Course:
Whatever I may be thinking of, I am always at the same time

more or less aware of myself, of my personal existence. At the
same time it is I who am aware; so that the total self of me,
being as it were duplex, partly known and partly knower,
partly object and partly subject, must have two aspects dis¬
criminated in it, of which for shortness we may call one the Me
and the other the I.9
William James’s reflections on the duplex self are probably the

single most influential source we have on the topic. As such, they
are a key element in our attempt to clarify the reality of the self, and
require serious attention. As James considered each aspect of the
self, the “me” (as we shall see later) gave him no difficulty; but the
1 proved to be very tricky. A self-described radical empiricist,
James was attempting to steer a clear course between the shallow
waters of classical empiricism and the rocky cliffs of idealism.
Wanting to take the “I” seriously as both continuous and experi¬
enced, he was willing neither to join Hume in dismissing the “I”
because its permanence could not be intuited nor to postulate with
Kant a nonexperienced transcendental “I.” James’s solution, rather,
was in the conception of consciousness as a stream, with successive
states 01 thoughts, each one distinct but taking up or appropriating
the preceding one. There is no substantial identity of a metaphysi¬
cal thinking I, but a functional identity of successive states or
thoughts-the thoughts themselves being the thinkers. “1” and “me”
are names for what Thought is emphasizing at any point in the
stream. The stream with its passing states of consciousness is all

psychology needs; postulating the “1” as a substantial principle of
unity is, as a possibly punning James says, “superfluous.”10 For
James, explicitly restricting himself to a psychological perspective,
distinct, successively appropriating Thoughts adequately explain
the continuity of the “I” we experience.
James is satisfied, but some readers may be a bit suspicious of
his capitalized Thoughts that are thinkers. Whether Thought is
more radically empirical than the “I” may depend on our notion
of “experience.” In any case it is crucial that James does not end
by affirming the “I” as a central personal reality more permanent
than passing states—as, in our context, a radical principle of self¬
transcendence. Perhaps we should take a second look at the duplex
self. James begins by distinguishing “whatever I may be thinking of”
from the simultaneous reality of being “more or less aware of myself,
of my personal existence.” This is a key distinction, but it is not clear
exactly how James understands it. In the first instance there is
clearly the presence of some object (“whatever”) to a subject (“I”).
But in the second it is not clear whether there is the presence of an
object (“myself”) to a subject (“I”) or the presence of a subject (“I”) to
itself. Despite the important difference between “thinking of” and
“aware of,” James’ language does not make clear which of two radi¬
cally different kinds of psychic reality is at stake here.
The next sentence (“At the same time it is I who am aware...”) sug¬
gests that James may have been thinking in both of the above
instances of the same kind of presence, of the presence of an object
to a subject. Otherwise, “I who am aware,” which clearly seems to be
a reference to subjective self-presence, would be redundant if “more
or less aware of myself” in the first sentence referred to the presence
of a subject to itself rather than of an object to a subject. To use an
analogy that is at once grossly inadequate as well as anachronistic,
James may have been thinking not of a TV set that is showing a pic¬
ture and is simultaneously “on” (indeed, being “on” is a condition
of showing a picture), but of a set that is showing a “picture within a
picture” (two objects: “myself” more or less, within “whatever”). Of
course, since being “on” is not being conscious, TV sets present pic¬
tures not to themselves but to us; my apologies!
Sufficiently confused? Well, hold on to your remote controls-it
becomes even more interesting as James goes on to align “known,”
“object,” and “me,” and to group “knower,” “subject,” and “I”

together. This may seem fine at first glance, but what are the impli¬
cations? As an object, the “me” can presumably be known. But is it
only objects that can be known? What about subjects? What about
the “I”? Can the knowing “I” know itself as a subject? The way James
arranges his line-up does not encourage us to think so.
In a recent book, Owen Flanagan, a contemporary follower of
James, discusses the issue in terms of what he calls “self-
consciousness.”11 He distinguishes self-consciousness in terms of
two ends of a spectrum—as weak and strong, and as low-level and
high-level. Strong (high-level) self-consciousness is definitely a
matter of self-reflection, the self reflexively thinking about, know¬
ing itself as an object. At the other end of the spectrum is weak
(low-level) self-consciousness, which Flanagan identifies with
James’s reality of being “more or less aware of myself...” Here
Flanagan says very little, and is no clearer than James. He wants to
distinguish this awareness, this “sense that the experience is the
subject’s experience” from explicit self-representation, but he
explains it as a different degree of self-consciousness, not a differ¬
ent kind of psychic presence.
Because a precise grasp of the nature of the conscious “I” is
absolutely essential for understanding the self in its desire for tran¬
scendence, I will leave James for a few paragraphs now, and turn to
a direct, straightforward consideration of the question. With the
help of Bernard Tonergan’s analysis, we will pay particular atten¬
tion to: consciousness not as the perception of objects, but as sub¬
jective experience; reality as known not insofar as it is an object,
but insofar as it is in act; and consciousness not just as cognitive,
but also as constitutive.12 In his view of the self, Lonergan follows
the general lines of the distinction between “I” and “me” character¬
istic of modern philosophy and psychology. Within this interior
duality, however, Tonergan introduces a distinctive understanding
of the “I” that adequately complements the clarity philosophers
and especially psychologists have given to the “me” as socially con¬
structed. This meaning of T is rooted in an understanding of con¬
sciousness as the self’s constitutive presence to itself.
In order to clarify his notion of conscious intentionality or inten¬
tional consciousness, Lonergan focuses on such distinctively per¬
sonal activities as understanding, judging, and deciding—all
operations that are essentially personal in the sense that whenever

they are performed the self pre-reflectively is aware of, is present to,
or experiences itself operating. Such operations not only intend
objects, then, but also render the operating self conscious. Thus,
by their intentionality essentially personal operations make objects
present to the self, and in the same act, by their consciousness, they
simultaneously make the operating (in act) person present to
itself—make it an “1.” A person may, for example, be most intensely
conscious, present to self, while absorbed, or, as we sometimes say,
even “lost,” in a powerful film. Such experience seems paradoxical
if we identify consciousness not with the subject’s self-presence
within intentional activity, but rather with reflexive knowing, which
would provide a competing object of attention. “Losing” oneself in
an enthralling film, however, is the opposite not of consciousness
but of focusing on oneself. In both cases the self referred to (as
“lost” and as focused on) is the self-as-object; the self-as-subject
does the “losing” in the first case and the focusing in the second.
By recognizing consciousness as the subjective presence of a per¬
son to herself in the very act of viewing, it becomes clear how she
can be both fully conscious and fully engrossed in the film simulta¬
neously. This is not the reflexive self-consciousness of introspec¬
tion. Reflexive knowing is a second act that a film viewer may
perform, when, after turning off the VCR, she perhaps thinks about
her own life in light of the film. In this case, a person is simultane¬
ously present to herself in two different ways: as a subject (an “I”)
by consciousness, and as an object (a “me”) by the intentionality of
the reflexive act. In direct knowing (of a film) the self is known
once, as subject; in reflexive knowing the self is known twice, as
subject and as object. This key distinction between consciousness
and reflexive knowing bears repeating: in consciousness the “I” is
present to itself as a subject within intentional operations; in reflex¬
ive knowing the “me” is present as an object to the “I,” which is
simultaneously present to itself as subject.13
Consciousness, according to Lonergan’s distinctive theory, not
only reveals the self-as-subject, but also constitutes it as such.
Unlike external objects, the self-as-subject experienced in con¬
sciousness does not exist without consciousness (in a deep coma,
for example).14 The “1” who understands, judges, and decides is not
only revealed to itself in consciousness as intelligent, reasonable,
and responsible, but is capable of understanding, judging, and

deciding only through consciousness. The self is brought into
being as an “I” by the very consciousness that reveals it to itself. We
must be very clear about this: you do not exist because I experience
you, but I (not my body but I who am a subject) exist because I
experience myself as a subject. In short, consciousness is not only
cognitive, it is also constitutive of the knowing self-as-subject, of
the “I” that is cognitively present to itself.
So, I hear you asking, what is the point of all this? Does it really
make any difference how we understand the “I”? A full answer will
have to emerge as we develop our understanding of the self in its
radical desire for transcendence, but now we can briefly anticipate
that development by emphasizing the “I” as the dynamic principle
of transcendence. Later I will insist that significant transcendence
requires a strong self; now I want to stress that the very possibility
of transcendence requires a self that is capable of reaching beyond
itself, and that central to such a self is not an inert, opaque meta¬
physical substance or a solipsistic self-as-object, but a dynamic “I,”
a conscious unity crowning a drive rooted in our genes and perme¬
ating our entire beings.
While James accounts for our sense of personal continuity by
positing Thoughts, distinct, but successive appropriating states in
a stream of consciousness, Lonergan highlights the constitutive
consciousness of the self-as-subject (the “I”) in contrast to the
reflexive knowing of the self-as-object (the “me”). The key differ¬
ence here is that James’s account moves away from our experience
of the “I” while Lonergan’s account allows us to assess it by appeal¬
ing back to the data of consciousness in a normal process of verifi¬
cation. Because we do not experience ourselves as a series of
passing states, even appropriating ones, we have no evidence to
affirm James’s account. James is quite clear on this: “States of con¬
sciousness themselves are not verifiable facts.”15 On the other hand,
the data of consciousness do support an affirmation of the unity of
the “I,” of ourselves as subjects.
In our conscious presence to ourselves we experientially know
ourselves as subjects; the unity of this “I” that is given in conscious¬
ness is part of the data of consciousness. Here one’s epistemology
becomes crucial: Is reality known only insofar as it is an object, or is
it known rather insofar as it is in act? Following Descartes’ lead,
philosophical positions that recognize only the objectified data of

consciousness can acknowledge as real only the objectified “me,”
not the “I” that is never experienced as object. But acknowledgment
of the subjective presence of the “I” to itself as experienced within
intentional acts allows one to move in a process of critical intro¬
spective inquiry from these experiential data of consciousness
through understanding to an affirmation of the “1” in the very act of
experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding. Like all affir¬
mations, this reflexive affirmation is of an object, but an object that
is a subject. Although our presence to ourselves as subjects can
only be experienced, the subject we experience can be objectively
affirmed through introspection.16
In contrast to a process that takes its start from data given in the
self-presence of consciousness, James sees the alternatives as
“direct introspective acquaintance with our thinking activity as
such, with our consciousness as something inward...,” on the one
hand, and consciousness as “a postulate [rather] than a sensibly
given fact” on the other.17 Lonergan’s position understands intro¬
spection as a process, not a direct acquaintance; and conscious¬
ness as a condition, not an object, of introspection. At the same
time, it understands facts not as sensibly given but as issuing from
correct judgments; and data of consciousness as significantly dif¬
ferent from data of sense.
As affirmed in the data of consciousness, the “I” is empirical, not
a metaphysical Self or transcendental Ego postulated inside the per¬
son. Just as the self is simply the person as conscious, the “I,” as the
subjective pole of the self, is the radical desire of the human being
for meaning, integration, and self-transcendence come to the lumi¬
nosity of consciousness (sometimes called “soul,” sometimes
“spirit”). Persons are present to themselves because that is the way
the human organism naturally works; affirmation of the “I” does not
add an internal super-person named the “I,” it simply confirms the
person as conscious (TV sets—here we go again—turn “on” because
of the way they are “wired,” not because there is a super-set inside).
What, again, is the point of all this? Though both James and
Lonergan give prominence to the conscious “I,” at the bottom line it
is in the difference between the two accounts of consciousness that
we find the possibility of affirming this dynamic “I,” the living ques¬
tion that drives everything that is peculiarly personal. This dynamic
“I” is central to the Christian life; without its affirmation, the gospel
call to the self-transcendence of truth and love is as meaningless as
the wind howling across a barren desert. Absent a dynamic “I,”
there remains only a truncated and thus distorted self, a self capa¬
ble of aspiring to nothing more than one form or another of shal¬
low individualism, the perfect pawn to be manipulated in a
consumer society.
But while the “I” is distinct from the “me” in the duplex self, it is
never separate from it; the self is one. So it is to the “me,” the objec¬
tive correlative of the “I,” that we must turn in the next section,
where James again awaits us.
“ME”: THE SELF-AS-OBJECT

Following William James, 1 have to this point characterized the
self as “duplex.” But perhaps “dipolar” is a more illuminating term.
What I mean by this is that the self has two distinct but not sepa¬
rate poles: a subject-pole and an object-pole, an “I” and a “me.”
These poles exist in a dialectical relationship. To understand this
elliptical self we must understand both poles, the “I” and the “me,”
in their mutually influencing relationship. We have considered the
“I”; now we must turn our attention to the object-pole, the “me.”
James, we recall, names the “me” the “self as known,” because
for him only the objective self is known. He points out that it is dif¬
ficult to draw a line between what we call “me and what we call
“mine.” “Our fame, our children, the work of our hands,” he says,
may be as dear to us as our bodies are, and arouse the same feel¬
ings and the same acts of reprisal if attacked.” And even our bodies,
which many have disowned or been glad to escape—are they, he
asks, “simply ours, or are they us?”18 Despite fluctuations among
what is me, and what is mine, and what has nothing to do with me,
In its widest possible sense...a man’s Me is the sum total of all that
he CAN call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but
his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors
and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses,
and yacht and bank-account. All these give him the same
emotions. II they wax and prosper, he feels triumphant; if
they dwindle and... die away, he feels cast down—not neces-
sarily in the same degree for each thing, but in much the same
way for all.19
James considers three dimensions of this “me”: the material “me,”

the social “me,” and the spiritual “me.”
The body is the most inner part of the material “me, ” some parts
of it more than others. Then come our clothes, which most of us
identify with. Next come our families and our homes. “All these dif¬
ferent things are the objects of instinctive preferences coupled with
the most important practical interests of life. We all have a blind
impulse to watch over our body, to deck it with clothing of orna¬
mental sort, to cherish parents, wife, and babes, and to find for
ourselves a house of our own which we may live in and ‘improve.’”20
And like our homes, also the things we collect, and especially those
we make, become part of ourselves.
The social “me” consists in the recognition we get from those
who matter to us. So we have as many social selves as there are per¬
sons or groups who recognize us and have an opinion of us we care
about. Damage to these opinions is damage to self. We usually pre¬
sent a different “me” to each of those persons or groups. This is
authentic enough in the case of a mother who shows one self to her
young children and another to clients in her law practice. But we
think differently about a politician who has a different self for every
set of constituents. And what do we think of the teacher who has
one self for administrators, another for faculty colleagues, another
for students, another for secretarial staff, and still another for main¬
tenance staff? For the man who falls in love, says James, the social
self is susceptible to the heights of elation and the depths of dejec¬
tion. “To his own consciousness he is not, so long as this particular
social self fails to get recognition, and when it is recognized his
contentment passes all bounds.”21
By the spiritual “me” James means no one of the passing states of
consciousness in particular, but rather the entire collection of these
states of consciousness, the “psychic faculties and dispositions
taken concretely,” all of which can become an object of thought and
awaken emotions.
When we think of ourselves as thinkers, all the other ingredients

of our Me seem relatively external possessions. Even within
the spiritual Me some ingredients seem more external than
others. Our capacities for sensation, for example, are less inti¬
mate possessions, so to speak, than our emotions and desires;
our intellectual processes are less intimate than our volitional
decisions. The more active-feeling states of consciousness are
thus the more central portions of the spiritual Me. The very
core and nucleus of our self, as we know it, the very sanctuary
of our life, is the sense of activity which certain inner states
possess....It is as if they went out to meet all the other elements
of our experience.22
Having laid out the three basic constituents of the self’s “me,”
James discusses feelings of the self (self-appreciation) and self-
seeking. Self-appreciation includes both self-complacency (self¬
esteem, but also pride, conceit, vanity, arrogance) and
self-dissatisfaction (confusion, shame, mortification, but also
despair). “Like fear and like anger,...these opposite feelings of Self
may be aroused with no adequate exciting cause. And in fact we
ourselves know how the barometer of our self-esteem and confi¬
dence rises and falls from one day to another through causes that
seem to be visceral and organic rather than rational, and which cer¬
tainly answer to no corresponding variations in the esteem in
which we are held by our friends.”23
Under self-seeking James distinguishes bodily self-seeking
(actually, the material “me” in the widest sense), social self-seeking,
and spiritual self-seeking. Of these, social self-seeking (our desire
to attract admiration, our love of influence and power, and so
forth) is particularly important insofar as much of material-bodily
self-seeking (beautiful physique, stylish clothes, possessions) is
aimed at social ends, and much of spiritual self-seeking (at least in
the narrow, religious sense) is aimed at an exalted kind of social
good-the fellowship of saints, the presence of God.
While we all experience conflict and rivalry among these selves,
James suggests that common opinion orders them hierarchically,
“with the bodily me at the bottom, the spiritual me at the top, and
the extra-corporeal material selves and the various social selves
between.”24 And in each kind of “me” we distinguish between the
immediate, actual, and narrower and the remote, potential, and
wider, approving the latter in cases of conflict. James finds the
potential social “me” especially interesting when for reasons of
conscience we bear the loss of an actual self (condemnation by
family, friends, and so on) in pursuit of an ideal social self

(approved by a higher-or highest possible-judge).25
Having outlined James’ discussion of the “me”-the material,
social, and spiritual selves-I must clarify the exact nature of the
reality at issue here. It is crucial to recognize that as known the “me”
in all its dimensions is a psychic reality. The material “me” is not
simply one’s physical body and clothes; not one’s family and
friends; not one’s house and possessions. Rather, it is one’s percep¬
tion of these things, which may, of course, be quite different from
the external reality, despite the power of that reality in shaping the
“me.” One’s perception of oneself will not necessarily be more
accurate than one’s perception of another, and it will almost cer¬
tainly be more emotionally charged. A teenage boy’s sense of self
can be crushed and distorted by an extreme acne condition. But a
young woman may be 100 pounds at 5'8", and still see herself as
grossly overweight. The social “me” is not simply the recognition
one gets, but one’s perception of that recognition. The encourage¬
ment of one teacher can make all the difference in the world to a
seventh-grader—it can, indeed, make her world. But another stu¬
dent who gets the same attention cannot believe that anyone could
care about him. The spiritual “me” is not simply one’s mind and
heart, but one’s perception of them. The discovery of one’s musical
or artistic talent can definitely shape a person’s life. But in others
real talent lies undiscovered and undeveloped, and, of course, the
same is true for the whole range of spiritual potential. If a man
thinks that religion is for women, his faith life—what we might call
his religious “me”-suffers.
The fact that James discusses the psychic reality of the self’s
“me” in terms of material, social, and spiritual selves may support
our naive inclination not only to reify the self, but also to then con¬
ceive of this “thing” we call the “me” as divided into “sub-things.”
We must continually remind ourselves that “self” means not some¬
thing added to the person, but the subjective experience of the per¬
son as conscious. The self is real, but not a thing/2t James’s
discussion of the material, social, and spiritual selves can most
accurately be understood as a specification of various dimensions
or aspects of the single “me,” the self-as-object (which, itself, is
only distinct, not separate, from the self-as-subject).
As a psychic reality, the “me” is a historical product of personal,
especially interpersonal, experience. In the language of "self-cre¬

ation,” we may say that if the self is constituted by consciousness, it
is constituted as this self only through the concrete specifics of its
own personal history, an experiential history of meaning and value.
Indeed, as historically conscious modern philosophy has taught us,
who we are as particular individuals is determined through time —
not only by our particular experience of the present, but also by our
particular memory of the past (whether or not it actually happened
that way) and by our particular anticipation of the future (whether
or not it actually turns out that way). As the self discovers and con¬
structs a world of meaning, it also constitutes itself in some specific
concrete shape, gives itself a certain character. In other words, the
“me,” the self-as-object, is gradually created as this particular self
through personal experience—discoveries, decisions, and deeds.
This ongoing, historical constitution of the self-as-object through
meaning and value occurs because its dialectical counter-pole, the
“I,” the center of conscious subjectivity, is a radical, self-creating
drive for integrated meaning and value in self-transcendence.
We should recapitulate at this point. The self is the person pre¬
cisely as conscious-a dynamic, dipolar, dialectical, embodied,
first-person reality constituted by consciousness and experienced
as “I” (self-as-subject striving for meaning and value in self-
transcending relationships) and “me” (self-as-object consisting of
material, social, and spiritual selves). The ego is the unconscious
correlative of the self's “I,” a unifying drive toward integration,
organization, and meaning.
Chapter 4
The Self in Post-Freudian

Psychoanalytic Theory
Now that we have considered the dynamic, dipolar self, and dis¬
tinguished the dialectical subject (“I”) and object (“me”) poles
within this embodied, “first-person” reality of the conscious person,
we are in a position to relate it to some important post-Freudian psy¬
choanalytic conceptions of the self. The intention here is to be brief
and suggestive rather than comprehensive and exhaustive. After
background remarks about Freud, Heinz Hartmann, and C. G.
Jung, we will consider transitional figures such as Melanie Klein,
Harry Stack Sullivan, and Karen Horney, then such object-relations
theorists as Ronald Fairbairn, D. W. Winnicott, Edith Jacobson, and
Otto Kernberg, the linking developmental perspective of Margaret
Mahler, and self psychologists like Heinz Kohut, George Klein, and
James Masterson. We will conclude with integrative figures like
Harry Guntrip and Erik Erikson.
BACKGROUND AND TRANSITION

Although Freud made attempts to move away from the classic
scientific model of biological instincts to a more ego-oriented
approach, the ego that became more and more central to his
thought was the unconscious system-ego of his tripartite structural
theory. He always took the conscious self for granted, and left it
mostly implicit.1 Heinz Hartmann later brought the ego to fuller
57
conceptual clarity, as he turned it to the external world and

endowed it with autonomy from both the id and the environment.
But he, too, focused on the ego as part of a structural system, not
on the ego as self.2 C. G. Jung, as we have seen, went in a different
direction on the ego/self question, but while his ego was more per¬
son-centered, his Self was a postulated ideal to be realized through
a process of individuation.3
Melanie Klein did not focus on the self, but by concentrating on
the internalization of significant interpersonal relations she was able
to make a breakthrough to the psychic world of ego-object relations
which Freud approached with the Oedipus Complex but was never
able to fully exploit.4 Harry Stack Sullivan also highlighted interper¬
sonal relations and “self” language, but his self was more systemic
than personal, and his “relations” were not with Klein’s distinctive
internalized objects, which later characterized the specifically
object-relations approach. His view of the self as made up of
reflected appraisals does however echo James’s social “me.”5
Karen Horney anticipated some of the later psychoanalytic focus
on the self, distinguishing actual, real, and idealized selves. While
for Horney the actual self is a person’s total experience, the real
self is an individual’s unique sense of integration or wholeness, a
deep source of growth. In contrast, the idealized self is a neurotic
attempt to avoid conflict through self-glorification.6
OBJECT-RELATIONS THEORY
In Ronald Fairbairn we finally get a psychoanalytic theorist who
both broke away from the grip of Freudian instinct theory and the
structural ego, and moved explicitly into the world of object-
relations. In contrast to the structural ego, Fairbairn proposed a per¬
sonal ego, a subjective sense of “I.” From birth the infant is a pristine,
dynamic, and object-related whole ego. Inherent in this ego is an
object-seeking life-drive: “libido is not primarily pleasure-seeking,
but object-seeking.”7 From this originally whole ego evolve ego sub¬
structures by a process of splitting and introjecting bad and good
objects in reaction to unhappy parental experience: libidinal ego and
exciting object; antilibidinal ego and rejecting object; and central ego
and idealized object. Fairbairn was particularly interested in the
THE SELF IN POST-FREUDIAN PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY 59
schizoid personality, which results from a combination of inner ego

splitting and withdrawal from object relations. Fairbairn uses the lan¬
guage of “ego,” but defines it in a personal way that moves in the
direction of this study’s “self,” with which it is compatible though
not equivalent (as is his object-seeking life-drive with the radical
desire for self-transcendence).
D. W. Winnicott explicitly placed the self at the center of his per¬
spective. For him, like Fairbairn, the infant is characterized by
wholeness from the beginning. But rather than a process of split¬
ting an ego given at birth, Winnicott saw a process of the emer¬
gence of a self that is merely potential in the newborn. Whether a
true or false self emerges depends on the quality of the mother’s
responsiveness to the infant’s object-relation needs. The facilitating
environment of a “good enough” mother supports development of
the infant’s true self within meaningful relationships. Such basic
ego-relatedness provides a life-long foundation for the self. With¬
out such a supportive environment, the lively creativity of the true
self is unrealized, and a false self develops in either rebellious reac¬
tion or meek conformity to this inadequate environment. “True”
and “false” here signify not two selves, but two different shapes that
the self may take in its development. In either case, I suggest that
we can understand’s Winnicott’s “self” as a way of qualifying the
concrete character the self-as-object (the “me”) assumes through its
earliest personal interactions.8 Regarding Mary, this approach
would focus on the unhappy relationship with her mother that
goes back as far as she can remember.
Though originally working in the context of Hartmann’s ego
psychology, Edith Jacobson created a developmental understand¬
ing of the self along lines very similar to the views of Fairbairn and
Winnicott. Jacobson took the notion of self (“one’s own person”)
that Hartmann had distinguished from the ego,9 and explicated its
development in terms of object-relations. Out of a process of sub¬
ject-object differentiation develop libidinal and aggressive drives in
reaction to external objects perceived as good and bad. For Jacob¬
son, libido is the essential drive of the self to live by relating to
objects in the external world.10
Much of Jacobson’s contribution, as well as Hartmann’s and Fair-
bairn’s, was brought together in the work of Otto Kernberg, who
was strongly influenced by factors like self-object differentiation
and the internalization of the good and bad mother. Kernberg

viewed the psyche as structured by groups of internalized object-
relations: object images and self images, as well as their affects.11
Before moving from object-relations theorists to sell psycholo¬
gists, we should pause to consider the work of Margaret Mahler,
whose view of early development in terms of self-object differentia¬
tion relates to both groups of analysts. Mahler traced the infant’s
development from non-differentiated states of autism and symbio¬
sis to what she calls the infant’s psychological birth in a process of
separation-individuation. After the first month of normal autism,
when the infant is essentially isolated from external stimuli, there
follows a period of symbiosis in which the infant is in a state of
fusion with its mother, a stage in which “I” and “not I" have not yet
been differentiated. After a few months the four-phase process of
separation-individuation begins: differentiation, practicing, rap¬
prochement, and consolidation of individuality. Over the course of
a few years this maturational process—always deeply influenced by
interaction with parents—results in a subjective sense of bodily and
psychological identity and autonomous functioning. Although this
process features a struggle between a longing for independence
and a desire for attachment (reflecting my basic thesis on the self),
Mahler maintained that a strong early attachment between the
infant and mother supported autonomous exploration. We shall
see more of this interesting relationship between these two basic
desires in our later consideration of development.12
The infant’s sense of sell has recently been featured in the
developmental-psychoanalytical work of Daniel Stern, who explic¬
itly departs from Mahler’s basic view on separation-individuation.
In his assertion that infants experience a sense of an emergent self
from birth, Stern rejects an initial confusion of self and other, a sym¬
biotic phase, and a period primarily devoted to the task of indepen¬
dence. In the first two years he sees emergent, core, subjective, and
verbal selves (each incorporating the previous, though all remaining
distinct), with the second year devoted as much to the creation of
intersubjective union with others as to the task of independence.13
During the first two months there is the emergent sell which con¬
structs a world of “otherness.” In the next few months there is the
core self, the infant’s experience of being an integral body. Then, in
the second half of the infant’s first year, there arises the subjective
self, an awareness of emotion, and a concern to attune feelings to

those of others. Finally, early in the second year there arrives, with
the emergence of language and the birth of symbolization, the ver¬
bal self, vulnerable to alienation and the experience of shame and
doubt, with resulting defense mechanisms and “false self.” For the
purposes of the present study, the differences between Mahler and
Stern are not as important as the fact that both assert the existence
of a self in relation to others by the end of the second year.
SELF PSYCHOLOGY
Heinz Kohut took a different angle on the self by understanding
it as the structure of narcissism rather than its object. In Kohut’s
view, primary narcissism develops independently from the id, ego,
and superego. Imperfect parental empathy leads it to differentiate
into the grandiose self and the idealized parental imago. The for¬
mer can develop into mature confidence and self-esteem, but its
arrest can result in exhibitionism and grandiosity; the latter can
integrate with the values of the ideal ego, but it can also de-rail into
depression and fragmentation. Kohut echoes Winnicott’s “good
enough mother” in his view that the individual, from infancy on,
needs the warm acceptance and loving support of empathic inter¬
action that provides a sense of worthwhileness. Unfulfilled, this
need leads to the aberrant self-development just mentioned: the
pathological structuring of the self-as-object.14
Though not a follower of Kohut, George Klein also attempted to
develop a psychoanalytic psychology of the self. Working within
a more traditional Freudian framework than either Kohut or
Fairbairn, Klein still managed to produce a view centered on the
maintenance of self-integrity very similar to theirs. For him the
need for a unified self is the fundamental motive underlying all
else. Life is essentially a matter of struggling toward the resolution
of incompatible aims in the context of this basic need for sell-
integrity. As a result, repression, anxiety, and other Freudian staples
all get re-defined in relation to the self. Ego and id, for example,
refer to what is and what is not owned by the self. Sexual activity is
not for discharge of energy but for the self-value symbolized in sex¬
ual accomplishment. For the integrative purposes of our study, it is
important to note that Klein works out his focus on the resolution
of incompatible intrapsychic aims in relation to self-integrity
within the context of object-relations, thus bringing traditional
Freudian issues together with the two most important aspects of
contemporary theory—object-relations and the self.15
James Masterson sought a complete theory of the self that would
include both the intrapsychic Freudian structures and the creative
dimension of subjective experience. He called this the real self. This
real self, mostly conscious, is made up of “the intrapsychic images
of the self and of significant others, as well as the feelings associated
with these images, along with the capacities for action in the envi¬
ronment guided by those images.”16 The real self derives its images
mostly from reality, and aims at the adaptive mastery of reality. In
contrast, the false self is derived mostly from infantile fantasies, and
is directed toward the defensive avoidance of painful feelings. In
Masterson’s view, the real self interrelates all its self-images (con¬
scious or unconscious, realistic or distorted), including body
images, and recognizes within them a single, unique individual.
Masterson understands this real self as developing along the lines
we have seen in Mahler’s view. His real self has similarities with the
understanding of self I am proposing in this study—for example, in
distinguishing self and ego and maintaining both, and in following
Erikson’s view of the automatic, regulatory role of the unconscious
ego. There are also significant differences, however, between my
interpretation of the self and Masterson’s; for example, Masterson
sees the ego as the “executive arm” of the self,17 which seems to
bring it to the center of consciousness in a way I would not.
Masterson discusses ten capacities that characterize the real
self.18 Even a summary list of these characteristics suggests what he
means by the real self: 1) the ability to experience deeply a wide
range of feelings; 2) the expectation of mastery and pleasure in life
as an entitlement; 3) the capacity for self-activation and assertion;
4) self-esteem; 5) the ability to soothe painful feelings; 6) the ability
to make and keep commitments; 7) creativity in problem-solving
and life patterns; 8) the capacity for intimacy; 9) the ability to be
alone without feeling abandoned; and 10) the capacity to recognize
continuity and sameness of self through time and space. In con¬
trast to the healthy development (Mahler’s separation-individua¬
tion) that leads to this real self, there is the abandonment
depression in the first three years that leads to a false self (the
deflated false self of the borderline personality or the inflated false
self of the narcissistic personality).
INTEGRATION AND IDENTITY

Few psychoanalytic theorists have focused on the self as explic¬
itly and forcefully as Harry Guntrip. Influenced by Fairbairn and
Winnicott, Guntrip stressed the psychodynamic, personal, and
object-relational dimensions in Freud, over the scientific, physio¬
logical, and mechanistic. He viewed the newborn as a whole psyche
with innate potential for developing into a true self within the sup¬
portive object-relationships that give meaning to our lives. Without
such relationships, especially with the first care-giver, the true self
is left unevoked, and false selves substitute for it. For Guntrip, psy¬
choanalysis is a theory not just of the unconscious, but of the
whole person, including the body, developing within more or less
healthy object-relations. He rejects the id and its instinctual drives,
and argues for one basic psychophysiological life-drive toward the
world of objects, a drive that generates aggression when opposed.
The self is the psychic dimension of the whole psychosomatic per¬
son energized by this drive. The self develops characteristics and a
structural identity as it relates libidinally to the object-world.19
Clearly, with Guntrip we have a psychoanalytic view of the self that
is very compatible with my dynamic, dipolar interpretation.
The above reference to “identity” can be our cue to turn to that
more widely known psychoanalytic theorist, Erik Erikson, whom we
have already seen stressing the unconscious character of the ego, as
well as the conscious nature of the “I.” Erikson has often been
grouped with the psychoanalytic theorists known as ego psycholo¬
gists, such as Hartmann, but his work is really too creatively inde¬
pendent to be put in any school. One of the most original of Freud’s
followers, he was also particularly reluctant to explicitly break from
the master on central points of doctrine. Thus, for example, while he
reinterpreted the instinctual drives, he did not reject the id, as other
contemporary theorists like Guntrip did. Erikson is not usually
grouped with object-relations theorists, but few writers have so force¬
fully shifted the psychoanalytic center of gravity from intrapsychic
conflict to interpersonal relations. Likewise, Erikson is not a self psy¬

chologist, but by his focus on identity he has done more than most
theorists to bring the self to center stage.
Identity is usually associated with the adolescent "identity cri¬
sis” in discussions about Erikson’s work, but it is so central a con¬
cept in his thought that it runs at various levels through the whole
of the life cycle. Indeed, such is the centrality of Erikson’s psy¬
chosocial identity that it integrates not only the “psycho” and the
“social,” but the past and the future, the conscious and the uncon¬
scious. Identity is “at once subjective and objective, individual and
social,” says Erikson.20
Identity involves a subjective sense of sameness and continuity
as an active, alive individual, a sense that is sometimes intense, even
exuberant. William James illustrates this in an 1878 letter to his
wife: “I have often thought that the best way to define a man’s char¬
acter would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude
in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and
intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside
which speaks and says: ‘This is the real me!”’21 On the social side,
identity “presupposes a community of people whose traditional
values become significant to the growing person even as his growth
assumes relevance for them.”22
Although Erikson often writes, especially in his early works, of
ego identity, he also makes it clear that identity is a quality of the
whole person: “at one time...it will appear to refer to a conscious
sense of individual identity; at another to an unconscious striving
for a continuity of personal character; at a third, as a criterion for
the silent doings of ego synthesis; and finally as a maintenance for
an inner solidarity with a group’s ideals and identity.”23
As a response to the crisis ol adolescence, Erikson stresses that
the “integration of an identity is more than the sum of childhood
identifications. As “more,” the identity that is an accomplishment
of the young adult results from a creative act of self-understanding:
It is the accrued experience of the ego’s ability to integrate all
identifications with the vicissitudes of the libido, with the aptitudes
developed out of endowment, and with the opportunities offered
in social roles.”23 The creation of such an identity, building on but
going beyond everything that came before, is clearly a major act of
self-transcendence.
I must repeat here the epistemological caution about reification

mentioned at the end of the previous chapter. Constant discussion
about true self, false self, real self, idealized self, grandiose self,
and even identity can seduce us into thinking about them as sub¬
stantial entities, as things. They may be real, but they are no more
things than the self is a thing. Like Freud’s id, ego, and superego,
these contemporary psychoanalytic selves must be understood as
patterns or functions of psychic processes within the conscious
person, not as entities added to the person.
The many views we have discussed here are by no means all
compatible with each other. But as we moved away from Freud and
Hartmann toward the theorists of object-relations and the self, a
dominant pattern of development began to emerge. And it is the
theme of this pattern, rather than the many variations, that I want
to highlight for the purposes of the present study. Articulated in
greatest detail by Mahler, this pattern is reflected in various ways in
the work of the many different theorists reviewed, from Fairbairn
and Winnicott to Masterson and Guntrip. This pattern of develop¬
ment proceeds from total undifferentiation and dependence to sig¬
nificant differentiation between self and other (and thus between
subject and object poles) and independence of the self.
Although these psychoanalytic theorists mainly address the self
that we have specified here as the self-as-object (the “me”), it is
clear that Masterson, Erikson and Guntrip, especially, strain toward
the integrity of the whole person and the subjective experience of
the “I.” But in every case we see possibilities of the self-as-object
being structured in authentic or unauthentic patterns. And
because the subject and object poles of the self can be distin¬
guished but never separated, the “1” experiences itself in these pat¬
terns. But because the “I,” the self-as-subject, is never completely
identified with the “me,” the self-as-object, the possibility of
change, of transformation, of conversion always exists in the radical
desire for self-transcendence. Whether realized in the formal set¬
ting of therapy or the spontaneous cauldron of daily life, this drive
for the real, this creative desire for authentic interpersonal relations
means that an individual is never finally condemned to today’s
false self. Though concretely rooted in an individual’s personal his¬
tory, the self-creating desire for meaning and value is in principle
infinitely open to reality.
THE UNITY OF THE SELF

We have seen object-relations theorists like Fairbairn, Winnicott,
and Guntrip stress the wholeness of the person. Fairbairn, for
example, insisted on viewing the infant as a whole psychic self
from the very beginning of life: “The pristine personality of the
child consists of a unitary dynamic ego.”26 And Guntrip was just as
adamant in his view of the psychosomatically whole person.27
Though generally in agreement with Erikson, Guntrip took strong
exception to Erikson’s view of the human as made up of evolution¬
ary layers in which the primitive past survives to wreak havoc in the
present. Discussing the id and the ego, Erikson wrote that “the
name ‘id’...designates the assumption that the ego finds itself
attached to this impersonal, this bestial layer like the centaur to his
equestrian underpinnings: only that the ego considers such a com¬
bination a danger....”28 Guntrip vehemently rejected the ineradica¬
ble dualism of the centaur’s two hostile layers as undermining the
goal of a mature, whole human person. He preferred Harry Stack
Sullivan’s view of the body as the biological substrate that is taken
up into the personal self.29
This issue of the wholeness or unity of the person has been dealt
with most comprehensively, perhaps, by Michael Polanyi and
Bernard Lonergan. Both view the person as a multileveled reality,
with each higher level integrating the lower levels into a greater
unity.
Working from his distinction between subsidiary and focal
awareness in personal knowing, Michael Polanyi specifies two dis¬
tinct levels in knowledge and in reality, “that of a comprehensive
entity and that of its particulars...." Then, starting with two com¬
paratively low levels, a machine and its parts, Polanyi erects “a con¬
secutively rising set of levels, right up to that of responsible human
personhood.” In his view, higher levels are dependent on lower lev¬
els, and although lower levels cannot account for successful higher
level operations, inadequacies on lower levels—poor physical
health, for example—can account for higher level errors or malfunc¬
tions. Also, within this scheme of levels, Polanyi sees desires of the
body in conflict with the desire for truth or other goods of intrinsic
excellence. Thus, the desire for truth becomes an act of self-com¬
pulsion, in which “the utmost straining of every clue pointing
towards the true solution finally imposes a particular choice upon

the chooser,” who submits to a personal sense of responsibility.
Though dependent on lower levels, the highest level introduces an
integrating order of personal unity.30
For Bernard Lonergan, the person is explicitly a unity-in¬
tension. At any point in development a person is an individual,
existing unity, differentiated physically, chemically, organically, psy¬
chically, and intellectually. Each level takes up or sublates the lower
level into a higher integration. Personal development follows a law
of limitation and transcendence, a law of tension. “On the one
hand, development is in the subject and of the subject; on the other
hand, it is from the subject as he is and towards the subject as he is
to be.” Thus development occurs only when the dynamism for
change breaks through the inertia of the subject’s existing stage. In
personal change, of course, the tension is conscious. Anticipating
the future can be terrifying. And when the development involved is
intellectual, there is the deeper challenge of giving the pure desire
to know its head, of allowing it to dominate one’s knowing and liv¬
ing. “For the self, as perceiving and feeling, as enjoying and suffer¬
ing, functions as an animal in an environment, as a self-attached
and self-interested centre within its own narrow world of stimuli
and responses. But the same self, as inquiring and reflecting, as
conceiving intelligently and judging reasonably, is carried by its
own higher spontaneity to quite a different mode of operation with
the opposite attitudes of detachment and disinterestedness.”31
So, for Lonergan, the tension of human consciousness consists
in the fact of an ineluctable “opposition between a centre in the
world of sense operating self-centredly and, on the other hand, an
entry into an intelligently ordered universe of being to which one
can belong and in which one can function only through detach¬
ment and disinterestedness.” Thus in personal development the
point of departure that is to be changed is “permanent in the self-
centred sensitive psyche content to orientate itself within its visible
and palpable environment and to deal with it successfully.” And
Lonergan makes it clear that the pure desire and the sensitive psy¬
che are not “two things, one of them T and the other ‘It’. They are
the unfolding on different levels of a single, individual unity, iden¬
tity, whole. Both are I and neither is merely It.” If our intelligence
and reasonableness seem more us than our sensitive spontaneity, it
is because of the higher integration the former succeed in imposing

on the latter. But regardless of how successful the higher integra¬
tion of intelligence and reasonableness is, Lonergan maintains that
“the basic situation within the self is unchanged, for the perfection
of the higher integration does not eliminate the integrated or mod¬
ify the essential opposition between self-centredness and detach¬
ment. The same T on different and related levels of operation
retains the opposed characters.”32
Such, as Lonergan sees it, is the unity of the person. The person
is a unity, but a unity-in-tension. The person is a unity because its
several levels are related through sublation, each higher level taking
up and integrating the lower. But it is a unity-in-tension because
even full integration does not eliminate the opposition between
limitation and transcendence, between the self-centeredness of the
sensitive psyche and the detachment and disinterestedness of the
pure desire.
This permanent opposition may sound pessimistic to Guntrip,
who stressed unity in contrast to the tension in wThat he regarded as
Erikson’s dualism. But, like it or not, such tension is the basic stuff
of pastoral counseling and spiritual direction. For these ministries
work toward realizing genuineness by lifting that tension into con¬
sciousness, which is, in Lonergan’s view, “the necessary condition
of the harmonious co-operation of the conscious and unconscious
components of development.”33
Now that we have considered the unity of the person, we can
return to the related question of the unity of the self raised earlier,
especially in connection with the bodily “me.” For both Polanyi
and Lonergan the highest level of the person is conscious, even
though they consider it here in the third person, objective terms
of person rather than in the first person, subjective terms of self.
Lonergan does use the language of self, however, and we have
already seen that he affirms the unity of the conscious “I."
The lact that we can affirm the unity of the “I” does not mean
that it is a simple unity. The complex, multileveled character of our
being introduces ambiguity into the conscious person’s experience
of self. Indeed, we experience that ambiguity every day. It is partic¬
ularly clear in the relation between the “I” and the body. What are
we to make ol James s statement that “the body is the innermost
part of the material me in each of us...”?34 Are our bodies, as James
puts it, ours, or are our bodies ns? For example, we say things like “J
feel great today,” identifying with our bodies; we also say “This
sprained ankle is killing me,” distinguishing a body part from the
self and even casting it against the self. Are we bodies, or do we
have bodies? Certainly, we experience ourselves as embodied, but
we usually do not say “I am a body.” But we do say “I am...” fat or
thin, tall or short, strong or weak, and so forth—using the same
terms we use to characterize our bodies.
Again, I say that I play tennis, not that my body or my arms and
legs play tennis. At the same time, I say that I have arms and legs,
not that I am arms and legs. I can even imagine myself losing my
arms and legs without losing my sense of “I,” of who I am. I would
be changed, but still the same “I.” It is more difficult for me to
imagine not being a tennis player, but that is possible, too. Of
course, there is a huge difference between never having been a ten¬
nis player and being a former player. This ambiguity between the
self’s sense of “I” and body, rooted in the multileveled structure of
the person, becomes conscious because of our ability to reflect
back on the self. To put the point in Polanyi’s terms, we can focus
our knowing rejlexively on our body (or on its particular parts) as
well as simply dwell in the body as we focus on other things (which
we usually do). When we dwell in our bodies, we identify with
them: I play tennis. In fact, reflexive analysis of body parts in play
can destroy the playing—paralysis through analysis! In this case, we
are focusing on ourselves instead of on the ball. In tennis, as in
other sports, we practice strokes and other moves endlessly so that
we can make them our own or dwell in them, which frees us to
focus exclusively on the ball and the game’s action without think¬
ing about or focusing on how we are playing. Athletes refer to high
level indwelling as being in “the zone” (Maslow’s “peak experi¬
ence”): heightened subjectivity (presence to oneself as subject)
within simultaneous intense attention to the action (focus on an
object). So, we can ask the question again, are we bodies, or do we
have bodies, and now give the odd answer, yes: we are bodies inso¬
far as we dwell in them; and we have bodies insofar as we focus on
them. We are embodied.
This structure of indwelling and reflection exists not only
between the self and the body, but also within the self. We dwell in
the unity of the whole self when we are functioning well and
(pre)occupied with extrapsychic events. But at times we also turn

our attention to ourselves (not just our bodies), and focus on the
self-as-object. This reflexive analysis “breaks up” the self’s unity,
and we experience complexity and division within the self, some¬
times very painfully.
The really difficult question is how far the process of stripping
the self can go before the seif is lost. Memory, a central theme in
Augustine’s Confessions, certainly plays a key role here. I may stop
playing tennis, and become a former player, but if I should then for¬
get that I had ever played, I would lose a part of my past, a part of
myself. This is a negative way of making the positive point that
memory is essential to our sense of self. Beyond everything else we
have considered, it must be recognized that this sense of self is
rooted, held, maintained in memory. As the wildly frequent cases
of amnesia in soap opera plots amusingly remind us, without
memory there would be no concrete, historical self, no cohesive
unity-identity-whole that we experience; there would be no stream,
only unconnected flickers of consciousness. Only through mem¬
ory expressed in some kind of narrative (rarely a formal autobiog¬
raphy) does the ongoing, historical process of self-creation cohere
in a sense of self.35
We have traced the self from Freud through several transitional
figures to contemporary object-relations theorists and self psychol¬
ogists. The historical pattern is definitely one of increasing promi¬
nence of the self—from implicit to explicit, from taken for granted
to taken as central. The further we pursued the trail the closer we
came to a psychoanalytic conception of the self that is clearly com¬
patible with my theory of the dynamic, embodied, dipolar self (“I”
and “me”) fundamentally desiring to be a self and to move beyond
the self in relationship. In these psychoanalytic conceptions we dis¬
covered valuable models for understanding the various ways (both
healthy and distorted) in which the developing self-as-object takes
shape—optimally in the real or true self grounded in supportive
object-relationships. I conclude by noting the dialectical circularity
in self-object relationships: the true sell both emerges Irom sup¬
portive object-relationships and also gives rise to ever more expan¬
sive relationships.
Chapter 5
Self-Transcendence, the True

Self, and Self-Love
DESIRE FOR SELF-TRANSCENDENCE

My basic understanding of the self is rooted in the premise that
every person has a radical desire to reach out, to move beyond, to
transcend the self. This drive is so basic and all-encompassing that
it includes in some way all the specific drives and more: Freud’s
pleasure drive, Adler’s power drive, and especially Frankl’s drive
for meaning. This radical desire for self-transcendence is at the
source of everything that is specifically human, and is realized in
every genuine instance of creative understanding, critical judging,
responsible deciding, and generous loving. Authentic human real¬
ization is a self-transcending realization achieved through these
specifically human activities. From a theological perspective, the
drive for self-transcendence is the divine life within the human per¬
son, and its realization culminates in a personal relationship with
God who is Truth and Goodness and Love. Henri Nouwen
expresses the various dimensions of self-transcendence through
the image of “reaching out.” For him, the Christian spiritual life
consists of three constant movements of reaching out: to ourselves
(from loneliness to solitude), to others (from hostility to hospital¬
ity), and to God (from illusion to prayer).1
As we noted in Chapter 2, self-transcendence as a criterion of
personal authenticity stands in complete opposition to both self-
sacrifice and self-fulfillment, as these are commonly understood.
71
Self-transcendence stands over against self-sacrifice understood

as a denial, renunciation, abnegation, or any other negation of the
true self. Without a powerful, authentic self, there is little self¬
transcendence. At the same time, self-transcendence stands in firm
opposition to any meaning of self-fulfillment which focuses on the
self as a collection of wishes to be fulfilled. In contrast, the experi¬
ence of self-transcendence supports the gospel’s paradoxical view
that authentic self-realization results not from a self-centered effort
to fulfill one’s every wish, but from a movement beyond oneself in an
attempt to realize the good of others. Victor Frankl makes this point
clearly in Man’s Search for Meaning: “Human existence is essentially
self-transcendence rather than self-actualization. Self-actualization is
not a possible aim at all, for the simple reason that the more a man
would strive for it, the more he would miss it.” One is actualized or
fulfilled, he says, only to the extent that one is committed to life’s
meaning: “Self-actualization cannot be attained if it is made an end in
itself, but only as a side effect of self-transcendence.”2
Indeed, such realization of the self through transcendence is
actually a form of self-fulfillment. However, it is a fulfillment of the
fundamental desire for meaning, truth, value, and love characteris¬
tic of personal beings. While its fulfillment in self-transcendence
brings a sense of peaceful happiness, the very nature of this basic
human desire defies any self-centered striving for happiness
through fulfillment. In fact, the fulfillment proper to the radical
personal desire for self-transcendence can require that one
“empty” oneself in the sense of sacrificing not the self, but the ful¬
fillment of otherwise legitimate interests of the self.3
Self-transcendence occurs, as I suggested in Chapter 2, in our
effective response to the radical desire of the human spirit for
meaning, truth, value, and love—a radical desire that is, at bottom,
always a desire for God. The desire for understanding seeks mean¬
ing in our experience through questions for intelligence. These can
be the practical questions of the home or office, the theoretical
questions of the study or laboratory, the artistic questions of the
stage or studio, or the philosophical-religious questions of the
classroom or chapel. We seek meaning, but not just any meaning.
For, once attained, meaning is critically scrutinized by the desire
for truth. We seek evidence to support the meaning. Is it really so?
This demand for verification is driven by questions for reflection
SELF-TRANSCENDENCE, THE TRUE SELF, AND SELF-LOVE 73
heading toward realistic judgment. When we affirm meaning as

true, with varying degrees of probability, we claim to be moving
from thinking about the world to actually knowing it. Realistic
judging, of course, is neither rash nor obsessed with certitude.
When experiencing, understanding, and judging occur within a
practical pattern of value oriented toward action, there follows the
further moral question for deliberation: given my judgment of the
situation and required action, what am I going to do about it? Will I
meet the demand of conscience by deciding to act in accord with
my best judgment? Following Freud, many authors contrast con¬
science and desire. For example, Robert Kegan speaks of “Freud’s
hapless infantile ego, appearing to be a player in personality but in
reality swamped by the contending forces of conscience and
desire.”4 My interpretation, by focusing on radical desire and
mature conscience, identifies desire and conscience: conscience is
the radical desire for self-transcendence. In other words, con¬
science, as I have argued elsewhere, is nothing other than the self-
as-subject striving for value.5
Finally, this practical questioning is permeated by a matrix of
affectivity which must be strong enough to support the required
action against the forces of conflicting interests. What, in the last
analysis, am I going to commit myself to in love? Thus, every
achievement of creative understanding, realistic judgment, responsi¬
ble choice, and generous love is an instance of self-transcendence.
Among all the possible realizations of human potential, such cogni¬
tive, moral, affective, and religious self-transcendence is the criterion
of authentic self-realization, of the true self.
This then, is the structure of the desire for self-transcendence:
questions for intelligence, reflection, and deliberation embodying
the desire, and their responding operations of understanding,
judging, and deciding which realize it. Because it is conscious, it
also delineates the self by specifying distinct levels of conscious¬
ness: empirical, intelligent, rational, and responsible or existen¬
tial—all interrelated as successive phases in the unfolding of the
single desire of the human spirit for self-transcendence. From bod¬
ily nerves and psychic images, through sensitivity and intelligence,
to free choice and love, the radical desire for self-transcendence
unifies the self in its heuristic dynamism and integrates it in its
realization.
In addition to cognitive self-transcendence, then, there is also

affective self-transcendence. According to Lonergan’s view, one is
affectively self-transcendent when the isolation of the individual is
broken and one spontaneously acts not just for self but also for
the good of others. Affective self-transcendence thus grounds the
real possibility of achieving moral self-transcendence in decisions
to act for value. And, finally, beyond cognitive, affective, and
moral self-transcendence, there is the possibility of religious self¬
transcendence. Lonergan says that a person’s capacity and desire
for self-transcendence meets joyful fulfillment when “religious
conversion transforms the existential subject into a subject in love,
a subject held, grasped, possessed, owned through a total and so
an other-worldly love.”6 We will see more on this in our later dis¬
cussion of conversion in Chapter 7.
So radical and thoroughgoing, indeed, is the desire for self-tran¬
scendence that we can complement the earlier affirmation that this
desire is God within us by also identifying the radical desire with
the self-as-subject. However, because the self-as-subject is never
separate from the self-as-object, and because God is transcendent
as well as immanent, this threefold identification of the radical
desire for self-transcendence, God within us, and the self-as-
subject is not pure and simple but ambiguous and complex. We
shall return to this point in our consideration of Merton’s true self.
This analysis of the desire for self-transcendence constitutes my
fundamental understanding of the dynamic human person. It is
important to note that this single concept of self-transcendence
includes what psychologists as diverse as Freud and Piaget recognize
as the two great yearnings of the human person: the desire for sepa¬
ration, differentiation, and autonomy on the one hand, and the
desire for attachment, integration, and relationship on the other; that
is, the desire to be a self, a center of strength, and the desire to reach
beyond, to transcend the self in relationship. These two elements of
the fundamental desire, the drive to be a self and the dynamism to
transcend the self, are inextricably linked: separation and attach¬
ment, differentiation and integration, autonomy and relationship.
Self-transcendence, in short, is a radically interpersonal, rela¬
tional reality. Outside of relationship there is no self. And this rela¬
tional understanding of self-transcendence specifies the goal of
pastoral counseling and spiritual direction: relational autonomy.
Pastoral counseling and spiritual direction are aimed at empowering

persons to realize ever greater self-transcendence in their lives. To a
great degree, this means helping people to liberate themselves from
the countless defense mechanisms and other distortions of the per¬
sonality that constitute a drag on the desire for self-transcendence.
The concrete, historical person has a desire to transcend the self,
but also has very real limitations. The task of pastoral counseling
and spiritual direction is to deal with those limitations in order to
increase the probability of self-transcendence in individual lives.
Having made reference to religious self-transcendence just a few
paragraphs back, this is an appropriate point to complete our con¬
sideration of the self by examining Thomas Merton’s notion of the
true self of religious experience.
MERTON’S TRUE SELF

Thomas Merton (1915-1968)—Trappist monk, poet, and peace
and justice advocate—placed the true self at the center of his teach¬
ing on the Christian life. We will consider key aspects of Merton’s
extraordinary life as illustrations in our chapter on conversion, but
now we focus on his teaching in order to expand our interpretation
of the self to the explicit dimension of Christian spirituality. In
Chapter 4 we saw a psychological version of the true self in Gun-
trip’s object-relations theory; here we will consider Merton’s theo¬
logical version, and then integrate it with Tonergan’s self-as-subject
within the framework of self-transcendence.
“For me,” writes Merton in his 1949 Seeds of Contemplation, “to be
a saint means to be myself.” Sanctity consists of “finding out who I
am and of discovering my true self.” Unfortunately, “Every one of us
is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self...who wants to exist
outside the radius of God’s will and God’s love—outside of reality
and outside of life.” Though an illusion, the false self is, for most of
us, the subjective reality. And this, for Merton, is the root sin, that the
false self, “the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires, is
the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the uni¬
verse is ordered.” Thus the truth of life is paradoxical: “In order to
become myself I must cease to be what I always thought I wanted to
be, and in order to find myself I must go out of myself, and in order
to live I must die.” And the paradox of life is the paradox of love.
Because God is love, a person “cannot enter into the deepest center
of himself and thus pass through that center into God, unless he is
able to pass entirely out of himself and empty himself to other
people in the purity of a selfless love.” For, as Merton writes, “love is
my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true charac¬
ter. Love is my name.” For Merton, then, the spiritual “bottom line”
is the true self: “If I find Him, I will find myself and if I find my true
self I will find Him.” But to reach the true self we must escape the
prison of the false self.7
A dozen years later, in his 1961 New Seeds of Contemplation, Mer¬
ton characterizes the false self as the superficial consciousness of
the external self, irreducibly opposed to the “deep transcendent
self that awakens only in contemplation.” Merton also designates
the superficial “I” of the external self as our empirical self, our indi¬
viduality, our ego. He continues his explicitly theological interpre¬
tation by asserting that this external, empirical self is not “the
hidden and mysterious person in whom we subsist before the eyes
of God.” In contemplation occurs “the awakening of the unknown
T that is beyond observation and reflection,” and thus the discov¬
ery that the “I” of the external self is really “not I.” Christian mean¬
ings of sin and grace are intrinsic to this interpretation. Because of
the “fall,” we are alienated from our inner self, the image of God in
which we are created. To be “born in sin” means that we come into
the world with a false self from which our true inner self must be
saved by God’s grace.8
Given this description of the true and false selves in terms of the
spatial images of inner and outer, we still need a more precise
explanation of their nature and relationship. Sometimes, for exam¬
ple, Merton speaks of the true self as existing, but hidden, in need
of discovery. At other times he says we must, together with God,
create our true self. Indeed, despite the clear theological thrust of
his true self/false self distinction, Merton s other descriptive char¬
acterizations of the self, though related and similar, are not identi-
cal-for example, the empirical, external, alienated, illusory,
narcissistic, and neurotic selves have somewhat different meanings
from the false self—and should not necessarily be understood theo¬
logically.'1 An explanatory framework is needed to interpret the var¬
ious sets of distinctions Merton draws within the self. An important
clue to such an explanatory understanding is contained in Mer¬

ton s 1959 study on contemplation, “The Inner Experience.”
Merton highlights the wholeness of the inner self by affirming
that it is “not a part of our being, like a motor in a car.” It is, rather,
“our entire substantial reality itself, on its highest and most per¬
sonal and most existential level.” The inner self, Merton explains, is
“like life, and it is life: it is our spiritual life when it is most alive.”
Because it is a fundamental form of life, it “evades every concept
that tries to seize hold of it with full possession,” but “every deeply
spiritual experience, whether religious or moral, or even artistic,
tends to have in it something of the presence of the interior self.”
Indeed, the life of the inner self can communicate “a new life to the
intelligence in which it lives, so that it becomes a living awareness
of itself.”10
This characterization of the inner, true self suggests a direct rela¬
tionship to Lonergan’s self-as-subject and radical desire for self¬
transcendence, and thus the possibility of an explanatory
understanding of Merton’s true self beyond descriptive spatial
images. We can take the above points in reverse order. First, “a liv¬
ing awareness of itself” present in “every deeply spiritual experi¬
ence” clearly points to the self-as-subject, the conscious,
experienced presence of the self to itself which is “beyond observa¬
tion and reflection,” and “evades every concept that tries to seize
hold of it.” Second, “our spiritual life when it is most alive,” our
entire being “on its highest and most personal and most existential
level” points directly to the self as structured by its radical desire
for self-transcendence, unfolding on successive levels of conscious¬
ness, with the highest level of responsible or existential conscious¬
ness subsuming the empirical, intelligent, and rational levels.
This linking of the true self with both the desire for self-transcen¬
dence and the self-as-subject reflects our earlier identification of the
radical desire for self-transcendence with the self-as-subject. Further,
Merton’s linking of the true self with the discovery of God reflects
our earlier suggestion connecting the desire for self-transcendence
with God’s presence within us. Now, at the subject-pole, or, as Mer¬
ton would say, the self’s deepest center, we can integrate: the true
self, the self-as-subject, the radical desire for self-transcendence, and
God within us. This interior complex can be experienced, but only
hinted at, never fully captured, in observation, conceptualization, or
verbalization. At its best, traditional Christian language has used the

words “spirit” and “soul” to refer to this dynamic interior complex.
Of course, these words have also been degraded in various ways—
dualism perhaps being the most frequent and pernicious.
Identification of the true self with the desire for self-transcen¬
dence allows us to understand how Merton can sometimes speak of
the true self as existing, though hidden, and sometimes as needing to
be created. We can affirm that the true self exists as the desire for
self-transcendence, but is still to be fully created in the sense of an
actually self-transcending person. In contrast, the false self is the
person insofar as he or she is failing to respond to the self’s most rad¬
ical desire. In explanatory terms, then, Merton’s true self as actual¬
ized is the self fully alive on the highest level of responsible,
existential consciousness, reaching out beyond itself. Of course, self¬
transcendence in its fullest sense, and thus the true self in its fullest
sense, is the result of conversion, in its cognitive, affective, moral, and
religious dimensions, which we will consider in Chapter 7. There we
will complete our reflection on Merton’s true self by considering the
transcendent self of religious conversion. At this point, however, we
may note that the discovery of God in the true self is, as Anne Carr
puts it, the “paradox of desire that ceases to be desire.”11
We may conclude our present consideration of Merton’s true self
by referring back to this section’s opening remarks about Guntrip,
Merton, and Lonergan. It should be clear now that in contrast to the
structural character of Guntrip’s psychological understanding of the
true self, Merton’s theological version is heavily moral-religious in
character. Lonergan’s methodological interpretation of the self is both
structural and moral-religious, and can thus integrate a psychological
view like Guntrip’s with a theological view like Merton’s. This is pre¬
cisely the orientation Charles Taylor advocates in his insistence on the
necessity of connecting the self and the good.12 Now that we have
considered the desire for self-transcendence and the true self, we are
in a position to examine the notoriously difficult issue of self-love.
SELF-LOVE
Few notions about the Christian life can contend with “self-love”
for the designation of “most puzzling.” We are told that we should
love our neighbors as ourselves (Lk 10:27). Jesus also said that if we
are to follow him, we must renounce ourselves (Mt 16:24). The
point, surely, is not that we should renounce our neighbors, but
what is it? How should we understand these lessons?13 How can we
both love and renounce ourselves? Most basically, what exactly
does it mean to love oneself? Before attempting an answer to these
puzzling questions, we should consult with another post-Freudian
psychoanalytical theorist who has dealt with self-love explicitly,
Erich Fromm.
Fromm starts with the fact that in much of Western thought-he
refers to thinkers as different as Calvin and Freud—while it is con¬
sidered virtuous to love others, it is sinful to love oneself. Love and
self-love are seen as mutually exclusive; the more there is of one the
less of the other. In this view self-love is the same as selfishness.14
In contrast, Fromm’s approach is to make a radical distinction
between self-love and selfishness, to regard them as opposites.
Genuine love, says Fromm, “implies care, respect, responsibility,
and knowledge." It is an “active striving for the growth and happi¬
ness of the loved person, rooted in one’s capacity to love.” Love of
others and love of self go together. In Fromm’s view, the affirmation
of one’s own life, happiness, growth, freedom is rooted in one’s capacity
to love, i.e., in care, respect, responsibility, and knowledge.”15
This genuine self-love is exactly the opposite of selfishness.
Interested only in themselves, selfish people see others and the
world for what they can get out of them, want everything for them¬
selves, and have no respect for the dignity of others or interest in
their needs. Selfish people are basically unable to love anyone,
including themselves. Though they appear to love themselves, says
Fromm, they actually hate themselves. Again, though selfish
people seem to care too much for themselves, in reality they are
unsuccessfully attempting to compensate for failing to care for
their real selves, as Fromm puts it.16
In sum, for Fromm, love is a basic affirmation of persons as
incarnations of “essentially human qualities.” Love of individual
persons implies love of humanity, but only in and through individ¬
uals. Therefore, concludes Fromm, “my own self must be as much
an object of my love as another person.”17
We can take some clues from Fromm as we attempt to under¬
stand self-love in terms of self-transcendence. First, Fromm notes
that selfish people fail to care for their real selves. This suggests that
we should look to the self-as-subject in its dynamism for transcen¬
dence as a key to understanding self-love. At the same time, if the
affirmation of one’s own growth and happiness is rooted in one’s
capacity to love, to actively strive for the growth and happiness of
others, it may be misleading to speak of one’s self as an object of
one’s own love.
The distinction between healthy self-love and destructive selfish¬
ness lies precisely in self-transcendence, in the distinction between
self-as-subject and self-as-object. We love ourselves in an authentic
way by loving others. Loving others is loving ourselves because acting
for the true good of others (their growth, happiness) is acting for our
own true good (realization of our capacity for self-transcendence).
This is loving ourselves-as-subjects in the act of loving others. To love
ourselves as we love our neighbors is, as the gospel puts it, to love our
neighbors as ourselves. In contrast, selfishness is the attempt to love
ourselves-as-objects, to fulfill our every want and wish. The self the
gospel calls us to renounce is the false self—the egocentric self-inter¬
ests that obstruct the self-transcending love of others and ourselves
that we are called to. We renounce the false self in order to love the
true self-as-subject in and through its very reaching out to love others.
Like consciousness, in which the self is known as subject in the same
act that knows objects, authentic self-love is not a reflexive, second act
of loving the self as object, but an interior dimension (subject) of the
one act of loving an other (object). Attempting to love the self in any
other way (as object) is certain to fail, is doomed to selfishness. Like
happiness, self-love is elusive: the more we seek it, the more it escapes
us. Both happiness and self-love are realized only in self-transcending
love of others.
Chapter 6
The Developing Self:

A Pastoral Counseling Guide
One of the most obvious and important facts about the desiring
self is that it changes. Much of the self’s change is what we call per¬
sonal development. We watch babies become children, then adoles¬
cents, then young women and young men. We have experienced this
process of development ourselves. We know that it involves much
more than physical maturity, important as that is. Developmental
psychologists have delineated patterns of this “more” in various basic
dimensions: affective (Erik Erikson), cognitive (Jean Piaget), moral
(Lawrence Kohlberg), faith (James Fowler), and even the “self” itself
(Robert Kegan). In this chapter we will track and integrate the main
lines of these developmental patterns in order to appreciate the real¬
ity of the desiring self as concretely as possible. As we do so, I will
highlight how the very meaning of development in these patterns is
self-transcendence. We shall see how each transition in the course of
development is an instance of self-transcendence, a new self moving
beyond the former self. We shall also see how the basic, overall
process—indeed, the normative course-of development is a move¬
ment from radical egocentrism in infancy toward ever greater self¬
transcendence in adult life.
In order to be truly helpful to their clients, pastoral counselors
and spiritual directors need to understand personal development so
they can more accurately discern where their clients presently are in
the course of life and also have a more critical and precise grasp-
psychologically and theologically—of development’s authentic
81
direction and goal. Toward that end of identifying the desiring self’s
developmental possibilities, this chapter will present a general guide
map, offering an overview of the territory and marking some of its
notable features. We will begin with a detailed consideration of
infancy, because it is there that the desire for self-transcendence that
pastoral helpers want to promote in adults first emerges.
THE CHILD: TRUST-BREAKING THE BONDS OF

EGOCENTRISM
From Egocentrism to Objectivity
Egocentrism is a philosophical concept that has been popularized

in cognitive developmental psychology by Jean Piaget. Basically, of
course, it means self-centeredness, just the opposite of self-transcen¬
dence. Applied to adults, the term “egocentric” isjudgmentally nega¬
tive. But applied to young children, it is descriptively neutral. We
expect young children to be self-centered. That is just the way they
are, in their thinking and thus in their behavior. They are incapable
of anything else. The word becomes an expression of censure with
adults because we expect more of adults. We expect more because
we implicitly assume that “growing up” involves a movement away
from egocentrism toward self-transcendence. This chapter will make
that assumption explicit and bring it into critical understanding.
In Chapter 4 we noted in the context of object-relations theory
and self psychology the thesis of self/object differentiation in the
infant. Despite differences among developmentalists such as Mar¬
garet Mahler and Daniel Stern, the basic point shared by the vari¬
ous theorists is that this differentiation exists by the end of the
infant s second year. Now we shall consider the major contribution
of Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget to this important discussion.
Piaget has delineated a course of cognitive development begin¬
ning in infancy and moving through key stages of childhood and
adolescence into adulthood. The four major stages are sensorimo¬
tor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational.
We will follow this course at appropriate points throughout this
chapter. But the basic pattern of this developmental course is
THE DEVELOPING SELF: A PASTORAL COUNSELING GUIDE 83
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established during infancy: from an initial undifferentiated egocen¬

trism to a more and more differentiated objectivity.
The basic features of Piaget’s biologically rooted theory of cogni¬
tive development are the interrelated dynamics of organization and
adaptation. Organization is the invariant process of structuring
intelligence into various forms as development goes forward.
“Adaptation is an equilibrium between assimilation and accommo¬
dation.”1 It is an interplay, a pas de deux. As assimilation, intelli¬
gence incorporates the data of experience into its structures. But
assimilation can never be pure because new data require intelli¬
gence to modify its structure in order to accommodate to the envi¬
ronment. Indeed, assimilation and accommodation go hand in
hand in every adaptational act: every assimilation of an object to
the structures of intelligence involves a simultaneous accommoda¬
tion of the structures to the object. Thus, by moving dialectically
toward an equilibrium, assimilating and accommodating activities
constantly create and recreate the structures of intelligence, and,
thereby, the shape of the subject’s world.
At the beginning of the infant’s sensorimotor stage, assimilation
and accommodation are undifferentiated, and thus an object (for
example, the mother’s breast) and the activity to which the object is
assimilated (such as sucking) form an indivisible experience. As a
result, self and object are merged in every infantile action, and the
distinction between assimilation and accommodation does not yet
exist.2 Piaget points out that to the extent that infantile “activity is
undifferentiated from the things it constantly assimilates to itself it
remains unaware of its own subjectivity; the external world there¬
fore begins by being confused with the sensations of a self unaware
of itself, before the two factors become detached from one another
and are organized cor relatively. ”3 As John Flavell has expressed
Piaget’s perspective on the infant, “the egocentric subject is a kind
of solipsist aware of neither self nor solipsism.”'1 Through what
Piaget calls an apparently paradoxical mechanism, “it is precisely
when the subject is most self-centered that he knows himself the
least, and it is to the extent that he discovers himself that he places
himself in the universe and constructs it by virtue of that fact.”5
Thus, ii egocentrism means the absence of self-perception and
objectivity, cognitive acquisition ol objects entails self-perception
because, as we noted in Chapter 3, in contrast to consciousness, in
self-perception the self is an object to itself. Pastoral counselors

and spiritual directors know all too well, of course, that infants
have no exclusive rights on self-centeredness as an obstacle to self-
knowledge. Unhappily, the pattern repeats itself in various ways at
all the stages of life. Our desire for self-transcendence may be radi¬
cal, but our clinging to the center is stubbornly persistent.
Piaget has described the infant’s two-year development out of
profound egocentrism as a “miniature Copernican revolution.” At
the beginning the newborn grasps everything to its body, but at the
end—as language and thought begin to appear-the young child has
become one of the many entities in an external universe it has con¬
structed. During this period of practical intelligence, development
through several substages completely transforms the infant’s initial
position in relation to the external world. “The self is at the center of
reality to begin with for the very reason that it is not aware of itself,
while the external world will become objectified to the degree that
the self builds itself as a function of subjective or internal activity.”6
Starting from egocentncity, consciousness develops through the
construction of an objective universe to an internal life localized in
the young child’s body and contrasted to the external world. So,
with simultaneous centrifugal and centripetal processes, there
occurs a gradual objectification of external reality and a greater self¬
perception, with the self seen as an object among other objects.7
From the child’s cognitive relationship with this new external
world evolve the basic concepts of object, space, causality, and
time. The most fundamental of these, presupposed by the others,
is the object concept. During the infant’s first year, “out of sight” is
equivalent to “out of reality,” but gradually the infant begins to
grasp not just sensory pictures but permanent, substantive objects.
Mommy continues to exist, even when she cannot be seen. This is
the beginning of the shift from an egocentric chaos to a structured
cosmos.8 Many more significant cognitive advances will be made in
the following years, which will relativize even the Copernican revo¬
lution of the sensorimotor period. But the importance of the gains
made during the sensorimotor period—especially the permanent
object—should not be minimized. Indeed, the appearance of the
permanent object is intimately linked to the psychoanalytic “object
choice.” As Piaget explains it, “The affective ‘object choice’ which
psychoanalysis contrasts with narcissism is...correlated with the
intellectual construction of the object, just as narcissism is corre¬

lated with lack of differentiation between the external world and
the self.” Of course the construction of the object is only half of the
story: the perception of the self is its necessary subjective correla¬
tive. Piaget reminds us that the “narcissism” of psychoanalysis is a
“narcissism without Narcissus, that is, without any sense of per¬
sonal awareness as such.”9 We should be clear that this newly per¬
ceived “self” is the self-as-object. The conscious self-as-subject is
present from the beginning, but without any reflective awareness of
itself. The emergence of reflective awareness introduces the issues
connected with what Erik Erikson terms “autonomy.” We will con¬
sider this shortly, but first we turn to the initial crisis in the Erik-
sonian life cycle, trust. Before leaving Piaget, however, I should
emphasize that we lingered on him in this section because the basic
thrust (if not all the details) of his thesis on egocentrism and objec¬
tivity is at the heart of this book’s premise: the person’s radical
desire for self-transcendence. In infancy we see the radical nature
of this desire in a strikingly clear way. In later years our response to
this desire makes us the kind of concrete, historical selves we grad¬
ually become, but in infancy this radical desire creates the very
dipolar, reflective self (“I” and “me”) that each of us is.
Trust and Hope
While cognitive self/object differentiation is occurring, the

infant is also experiencing the first affective crisis Erikson specifies
in the psychosocial life cycle-the struggle to work out a balance
favoring basic trust over against mistrust. By “trust” Erikson means
a “pervasive attitude toward oneself and the world derived from the
experiences of the first year of life,...an essential trustfulness of oth¬
ers as well as a fundamental sense of one’s own trustworthiness.”10
For Erikson, achievement of this trust is primarily a function of the
quality of maternal care, the same point we saw emphasized by
object-relations theorists. Mothers, he says, “create a sense of trust
in their children by that kind of administration which in its quality
combines sensitive care ol the baby’s individual needs and a firm
sense of personal trustworthiness within the trusted framework of
their culture’s life style.”11
t he successful resolution of this crisis, like all those to follow, is
never a case of all or nothing, but a favorable balance of trust. Total

victory over mistrust would result in an inappropriately pure, and
therefore naive, trust. Even in the best circumstances, the infant
experiences a sense of inner division, deprivation, and abandon¬
ment that basic trust must overcome throughout life. Indeed, the
particular strength or virtue proper to infancy is hope, “the endur¬
ing belief in the attainability of fervent wishes, in spite of the dark
urges and rages which mark the beginning of existence.” If life is to
be sustained, says Erikson, “hope must remain, even where confi¬
dence is wounded, trust impaired.”12 For the adult, serious loss of
hope means regression into a state of virtual lifelessness. Pastoral
counselors know that religious affiliation is no sure protection
against such loss.
In the larger picture of the life cycle trust “forms the basis in the
child for a sense of identity which will later combine a sense of
being ‘all right,’ of being oneself, and of becoming what other
people trust one will become.”13 And by receiving from its mother,
Erikson says, the infant “also develops the necessary groundwork
‘to get to be’ the giver—that is, to identify with [its mother] and
eventually to become a giving person,”14 to become, in the language
of our thesis, a self-transcending person. Thus it is in infancy that
trust and hope effectively break the bonds of affective egocentrism.
As in Mary’s case, however, trust is not always sufficiently estab¬
lished. Mary is painfully aware of the inadequacies in her relation¬
ship with her mother, inadequacies that extend back as far as Mary
can remember.
Self: Differentiation and Integration

Whereas Piaget and Eriks-on focus respectively on the specific
cognitive and affective dimensions of personal development,
Robert Kegan concentrates on delineating the fundamental unity
of the developing self that lies beneath and integrates cognition
and affectivity as well as subject and object. Kegan discovers this
fundamental unity in the meaning-making activity that constitutes
the very motion of the self’s development.
Kegan works from a neo-Piagetian constructive-developmental
perspective, but shifts the focus of differentiation and integration
from cognition to the prior reality of the self. From this perspective,
Kegan views the self’s radical developmental activity as both the

creation of the object (differentiation) and the subject’s relating to
it (integration). Thus from a lifelong process of development
emerges a series of ever more complex differentiations of self from
the world, what Kegan calls “successive triumphs of ‘relationship
to’ rather than ‘embeddedness m’.”15
While Piaget and Erikson are concerned with the gradual devel¬
opment of cognitive and affective object relations in the infant,
Kegan reaches for the “more basic phenomenon [underlying cogni¬
tion and affectivity], the evolutionary transition from an undiffer¬
entiated state to the first equilibrium” between self and other or
between subject and object. With an object-relation balance estab¬
lished by eighteen months, a pattern of development is set as “an
activity of equilibration, of preserving or renegotiating the balance
between what is taken as subject or self and what is taken as object
or other.” The developmental process is a continual differentiation
from the subject-pole, transference to the object-pole, and integra¬
tion of subject and object poles. This developmental activity is
clearly cognitive (for example, the infant’s ability to relate to absent
objects), but it is also intrinsically affective, the felt experience of
motion (for example, the infant’s protest at separation from its
mother). By locating the fundamental ground of self in decentra-
tion, Kegan specifies the source of emotion as the “phenomenolog¬
ical experience of evolving-of defending, surrendering, and
reconstructing a center.”16 Since decentration from embeddedness
to greater relatedness is always experienced as a loss of self (cen¬
ter), it is accompanied by anxiety and depression. As the balance
shifts to the new self, there is anger and repudiation of the former
self, now at the object-pole. Only when the new balance is fully
established can the old self be positively reappropriated. Guidance
through the adult negotiation of this process is a central task of
counselors and directors.
As a result of the decentering development during infancy, the
sell emerges from embeddedness in its reflexes. At the beginning
the infant does not have but is its reflexes. But in a radical transfor¬
mation of its deep structure, the self disembeds itself from its
reflexes, which now become the object of a new organizing self.
Thus by the end of infancy the self no longer is its reflexes, but has
them at its object-pole, and therefore is not subject to them. This
THE DEVELOPING SELF! A PASTORAL COUNSELING GUIDE 89
escape from the primordial incorporative stage of infancy does con¬

stitute a radical transformation of the self, but it is only the begin¬
ning of a multistage development. We will trace the continuing
differentiation and integration of subject and object throughout the
lifespan with Kegan in later sections.
I have emphasized the years of infancy because this is the period
in which the pattern of development from egocentrism to self¬
transcendence is established. As we have seen, this pattern occurs
during infancy: 1) in the cognitive dimension with the self/object
distinction and relation as assimilation and accommodation are
differentiated and integrated; 2) in the affective dimension with the
emergence of a favorable ratio of trust over mistrust; and 3) in the
deep self structure with the liberation of the self from embedded¬
ness in its reflexes.
The Impulsive Self: Autonomy, Initiative, and Industry

If the first psychosocial crisis of trust vs. mistrust highlights the
“transcendence” side of the self-transcendence equation in the
issue of relationship, the succeeding crises of childhood identified
by Erikson tend to emphasize the “self” side of self-transcendence
in the continuing construction of an independent individual that
gradually becomes more and more capable of moving beyond
itself. These three crises of childhood, which correspond to Freud’s
anal, phallic, and latent stages respectively, are autonomy vs. shame
and doubt, initiative vs. guilt, and industry vs. inferiority. From their
successful resolutions the self is strengthened in will, purpose, and
competence.
Every parent who has experienced the defying “No” of the “terri¬
ble twos” knows what Erikson means by the willful “autonomy” of
the self-asserting toddler. I like to refer to this strength as “indepen¬
dence” rather than “autonomy” because, although a necessary virtue,
it should not be confused with the autonomy of the mature adult.
The strength specific to the toddler is unbalanced, as it only can be at
this stage. As difficult as this defiant independence is for parents, it is
recognized as age appropriate, and as a promise of future character.
The adolescent version of independence-as challenging as that can
be for parents-is also recognized as developmentally necessary, but
when we see stubborn counterdependent willfulness in an adult we
recognize not maturity but inappropriate exaggeration or perhaps

even mildly pathological aberration: childish “independence” that
has never struck the mature balance of mutual autonomy. Mary, for
example, asserts an independent, even stubborn, willfulness, but her
lack of truly adult autonomy is revealed in her need to both rebel
against authority and fuse with partners.
Paired against autonomy in Erikson’s schema is shame, which
Fowler has recently highlighted, in relation to the self, as “painful
self-consciousness, alienation, and inner self-division.” Unlike
guilt, which is about something we do, shame is directly about the
self: “the awareness of the self as disclosed to others, or to the self,
as being defective, lacking, or inadequate...and, at worst, con¬
temptible.” Shame can be brutally destructive (splitting the self, as
we have seen in object-relations theory), but in its healthy forms it
also plays an essentially positive role “in the forming and mainte¬
nance of a sense of balance and worthiness in the emerging self,”
the beginnings of conscience.17
While autonomy is asserting itself in Erikson’s schema, the young
child who has emerged from the infantile embeddedness of the self
in its reflexes is entering into Kegan’s Impulsive stage, when it no
longer is its reflexes but has them at the object-pole. But while freed
from subjection to its reflexes, the new Impulsive self is embedded
in and thus subject to its impulses and perceptions. Now the self
has its reflexes but is its impulses and perceptions. The pre-schooler
thus has no control of its perceptions and impulses, which, with no
center to hold them together, are unorganized, always changing. The
young child’s lightning-fast shift from joyful delight to tantrum is
probably the most powerful expression of this lack of control. The
impulsive self cannot handle ambivalence.
Two or three years later the split within consciousness takes a deci¬
sive turn with the Eriksonian crisis of initiative vs. guilt. Here emerges
the Freudian superego, what Erikson calls “the great governor of ini¬
tiative.” A radical division and estrangement is created within the self,
and consciousness is never again the same. Parental rules are inter¬
nalized, and now the child not only worries that parents will discover
transgressions, but fears the guilt produced by “the ‘inner voice’
of self-observation, self-guidance, and self-punishment.”18 Later
development notwithstanding, the superego remains a permanent
aspect of the moral life, always to be dealt with. But if a balance
favoring initiative ensues from this crisis, a foundation is laid for

the development of an adult conscience. In such cases the positive
values of a self-transcending conscience, not the negative prohibi¬
tions of a moralistic superego, come to dominate the moral life.
That development is never easy, but its pain is the price of authentic
adulthood. In the meantime, the internalized constraints of the
superego rule the morality of childhood.
If play is the activity featured in the period of initiative, work-or
at least preparation for work-moves to the center during the
school period of industry. In all cultures at this stage, “children
receive systematic instruction of some kind and learn eagerly from
older children.”19 They also learn to win recognition by producing
things.20 The wisdom of life’s ground plan, as Erikson puts it,
arranges the coincidence of this psychosocial crisis of industry vs.
inferiority with the Freudian psychosexual period of latency and
the Piagetian cognitive stage of concrete operations. For while
latency allows concentration on the issues of industry, the emer¬
gence and logical grouping of concrete operations constitutes the
radical cognitive breakthrough that grounds the development of
the period’s proper strength, industrious competence: “the free
exercise of dexterity and intelligence in the completion of tasks,
unimpaired by infantile inferiority.”21
During the periods of autonomy and initiative affective develop¬
ment is accompanied and supported by the development of what
Piaget calls preoperational intellectual activity. Cognitively this is
essentially a period of transition and preparation. The key transi¬
tion is from the external actions of sensorimotor practical intelli¬
gence to the internalized actions of genuine thought. This prepares
the cognitive ground for the later breakthrough of organized inter¬
nal actions that Piaget calls “operations.” The major factors con¬
tributing to the transformation of this period are language and
socialization. As both these elements slowly increase, the young
child’s thought is exposed to criticism from other perspectives.
This critical discussion is gradually internalized, leading the child
to look for evidence to support statements that were earlier merely
asserted. Thus thought moves from intuition to a rudimentary kind
of reflection. Despite Mary’s affective difficulties during childhood,
her strong interest in reading and music indicate healthy intellec¬
tual development in the early stages.
The Imperial Self and Concrete Thinking
At about this time begins the emergence of concrete operational

thought, which marks a major point in the cognitive shift from ego¬
centrism to a decentered objectivity. What were earlier merely iso¬
lated individual intuitions are now logical operations, organized
and interrelated systematically in groupings. The essential charac¬
teristic of logical operations is reversibility; in arithmetic, for exam¬
ple, adding and then subtracting the same number, or multiplying
and then dividing by the same number, takes us back to where we
started. These powerful logical operations place the knowing self
in a wholly new cognitive world of objective relations. By the time a
youngster is ten or eleven, this transformation is complete, allowing
the self to move beyond its own viewpoint and appreciate those of
others. Even greater cognitive development is to come, but opera¬
tional thought has effected a deep revolution in the preadolescent
self, moving it into a world totally beyond the horizon of the preop¬
era tional child.
As the physical world is being conserved with the emergence of
concrete operations, so too is conservation transforming internal
experience and thereby creating an interior world unknown to the
younger preoperational child. As a result, the school-age child can
objectify its impulses as well as its perceptions, thus eliminating its
earlier instability and establishing a more enduring self. As Kegan
explains it, this transformation means that the self no longer is its
impulses and perceptions but now has them at the object-pole.
Now the disposition of the more stable self dominates the subject-
pole, and the self is embedded in its needs, interests, and wishes.
At this Imperial stage the child projects its embeddedness in its
needs, interests, and wishes onto the other, making the other the
means of fulfilling them. This manipulation occurs because while
the child understands that others have their own needs, interests,
and wishes, it does not yet have the ability to integrate them with its
own or to share the other’s feelings. That kind of empathic mutual¬
ity only comes with later development in perspective-taking.
On a more positive note, now that the Imperial self can control
its impulses, it enjoys a significantly greater sense of agency and
responsibility, all part of a dawning sense of one’s own authority.
With the greater power, freedom, and independence of agency, the
child now appreciates that things do not just happen (“the glass
broke”), but that he or she has something to do with what happens,
and thus some responsibility for it. All of this development in the
self’s structure has direct impact on the child’s moral life, to which
we now turn.
Early Moral and Faith Development
Our chief guide as we examine development in the moral sphere

will be Lawrence Kohlberg, who delineates six stages of moral rea¬
soning, paired off on three levels: preconventional, conventional,
and postconventional. By “conventional” Kohlberg means “con¬
forming to and upholding the rules and expectations and conven¬
tions of society or authority just because they are society’s rules,
expectations, or conventions.”22 The key to moral reasoning devel¬
opment, then, is the self’s socialization.
At the preconventional level, the child, with a concrete individual
social perspective, does not really understand society’s rules and
expectations, which are therefore external. At Stage 1 the child with
emerging concrete operations understands “good” and “bad” in
terms of avoiding punishment, obeying for the sake of obeying, and
not causing physical damage. Still egocentric in social perspective,
the interests of others mean nothing to the young child at this stage.
But as concrete operations develop, the older child’s social perspec¬
tive becomes capable of recognizing that others, too, have interests,
and that interests often conflict. Doing the right thing at the second
stage of Instrumental Relativism becomes a matter of acting in one’s
own interest, allowing others to act in theirs, and sometimes making
deals of fair exchange. In Mary’s case, of course, having a father who
is emotionally distant and a mother who is a sparring partner is not
especially conducive to this kind of development.
So, even from early to later childhood, we see in Kohlberg’s analy¬
sis of moral development some real movement from an egocentrism
focused on punishment and obedience to the self-transcendence of
reflective perspective-taking and fair exchange. This development
involves a move away from a preoccupation with physical conse¬
quences, black and white views of right and wrong, and punish¬
ment, toward greater awareness of the agent’s intentions, relativism
and diversity, and harm done to others or violations of rules. The
development in this trend is real, but limited. Just as the period’s

radical breakthrough of operational thought is real cognitive devel¬
opment, but is limited by the intrinsic concreteness of the opera¬
tions, so too is the period’s development in moral reasoning limited
by an excessive focus on the concrete interests of the self. The
greater development we will see in adolescence is required to break
the empirical chains of concrete reality. Before moving on to adoles¬
cence, though, we will complete our consideration of childhood
with a look at faith development in this period.
As Kohlberg is our guide for moral development, James Fowler,
whose analysis was inspired by the Piagetian-Kohlberg cognitive-
structural approach, is our guide for development in the dimension
of faith, or, as he sometimes calls it to stress its active character,
“faithing.” In Fowler’s approach, faith is an interpreting of experi¬
ence in terms of the ultimate conditions of existence, of one’s relat¬
edness to those “sources of power and values which impinge on life
in a manner not subject to personal control.”23 Despite his cognitive-
structural approach, Fowler affirms the whole self’s involvement in
“faithing”—the affective and evaluative as well as the cognitive
dimensions. Because he focuses on the structural core of “faithing”
(knowing and valuing) rather than the content of faith (knowledge
and values), Fowler understands faith (“faithing”) as a universal
human reality that may, but need not, be religious in any explicit,
conventional sense. As we proceed in the following sections, we will
consider the six stages of faith Fowler has specified: (1) Intuitive-
Projective, (2) Mythic-Literal, (3) Synthetic-Conventional, (4) Indi-
viduative-Reflective, (5) Conjunctive (Paradoxical-Consolidative),
and (6) Universalizing. At this point we will consider only the first
two stages, those characteristic of childhood.
During infancy Primal faith is undifferentiated from the trusting
hope that Erikson designates as normative for this preconceptual
and prelinguistic period. But as the symbolic function emerges
during the preoperational stage, the young child begins to manifest
the fantasy-filled, imitative characteristics of Intuitive-Projective
faith. Because the child is so totally dependent on parents for love,
security, and nurturance, they play a key role as authorities in the
child’s attempt to construct a meaningful world. Though still ego¬
centric, the child’s power of imagination (painfully terrifying as
well as delightfully exciting) is essential to faith at this stage.
Through imagination, stories can now shape the child’s efforts to

grasp life’s ultimate conditions. Deprived of a rich intimacy with
her parents as a young girl, Mary found some comfort in her room
with her books and music.
As the purposeful initiative of the play age gives way to the indus¬
trious competence of the school age, the new power of concrete
operational thinking grounds the emergence of Mythic-Literal faith.
Now the child is not simply influenced by stories, but has the abil¬
ity to create its own stories, to narratize its experience. The same
cognitive operations make it possible for the school-age child to
appropriate the stories, beliefs, attitudes, and moral rules of the
community, but the limitations of concrete operations also mean
that this appropriation will be uncritical and literal. So, for exam¬
ple, while the ability to take the perspective of others results in a
more personalized image of God than the young child has, that
image bears the heavy anthropomorphism of the concrete imagina¬
tion. Still, as limited as it is, this “faithing” is yet another evidence of
the preadolescent’s attempt to reach beyond itself, trying to inter¬
pret experience in terms of its limits. With Ana-Maria Rizzuto,
Fowler emphasizes the importance of parental images in the child’s
construction of its God representation. It is not difficult for us to
imagine the effect that Mary’s strained parental relationships had
on her image of God.24
THE ADOLESCENT:
SEARCHING FOR INDEPENDENT MEANING,
VALUES AND FAITH
Identity and Formal Thinking
Identity is the focus of Erikson’s consideration of the entire life¬
span, but it reaches its point of crisis in adolescence. As we saw in
Chapter 3, Erikson’s understanding of identity is “at once subjec¬
tive and objective, individual and social.” While it includes a sub¬
jective sense of sameness and continuity as an active, alive
individual, it also has a social side in the expectations and tradi¬
tional values of the community in which the young person seeks
role integration. In adolescence everything from the young person’s
past seems to come together with the anticipated demands of the

future to produce crisis: infantile and childhood identifications,
new self-definitions, and irreversible role choices.25 Now all the
“samenesses and continuities relied on earlier are more or less
questioned again, because of a rapidity of body growth which
equals that of early childhood and because of the new addition of
genital maturity.” Adolescents, “faced with this physiological revo¬
lution within them and with tangible adult tasks ahead of them, are
now primarily concerned with what they appear to be in the eyes
of others as compared with what they feel they are, and with the
question of how to connect the roles and skills cultivated earlier
with the occupational prototypes of the day.”26
Above all, adolescence is a “moratorium for the integration of the
identity elements” specific to the earlier stages, an integration
which must be realized in the new, larger, and more demanding
context of society. As the infant needed to establish trust in itself
and others, the adolescent needs to find people and ideas to have
faith in, to be dedicated to. As the toddler knew itself as what it
could freely will, the adolescent now must freely decide on an
avenue of duty and service. As the young child flourished in imagi¬
native play, the adolescent seeks “peers and leading, or misleading,
elders who will give imaginative, if not illusory, scope to his aspira¬
tions....” As the school-age child desired to make something work
well, the adolescent finds that the “choice of an occupation
assumes a significance beyond the question of remuneration and
status.” Though always difficult, this period of identity integration
will be less stormy for those adolescents whose gifts and training
allow them easy access to the economic and technological world.
Others less fortunate may become more explicitly ideological in
their search for inspiration. And failure to find genuine social
response to this search can result, says Erikson, in resistance “with
the wild strength encountered in animals who are suddenly forced
to defend their lives. For, indeed, in the social jungle of human
existence, there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of iden¬
tity.”27 Mary, unfortunately, knows this all too well.
Linked to this ideological seeking for an inner coherence and
durable values is the specific strength that emerges from a success¬
ful resolution of the identity crisis: fidelity, “the ability to sustain
loyalties freely pledged in spite of the inevitable contradictions of
value systems.” Erikson sees fidelity as the “opportunity to fulfill

personal potentialities (including erotic vitality or its sublimation)
in a context which permits the young person to be true to himself
and true to significant others.” The truth of fidelity verifies itself in
many ways, according to Erikson: “A high sense of duty, accuracy,
and veracity in the rendering of reality; the sentiment of truthful¬
ness, as in sincerity and conviction; the quality of genuineness, as
in authenticity; the trait of loyalty, of‘being true’; fairness to the
rules of the game; and finally all that is implied in devotion—a
freely given but binding vow, with the fateful implication of a curse
befalling traitors.” To stress how the fidelity of identity constitutes
the very meaning of youthful life, Erikson cites the example of
Hamlet. “When Hamlet, the emotional victim of his royal parents’
faithlessness, poses the question, ‘To be or not to be,’ he demon¬
strates in word and deed that to him ‘to be’ is contingent on being
loyal (to the self, to love, to the crown) and that the rest is death.”28
The mutuality characteristic of adolescence is highlighted in the
experience of “falling in love,” which, according to Erikson, often
involves “an attempt to arrive at a self-definition by seeing oneself
reflected anew in an idealized as well as eroticized other.”29 We could
ask for no better example of this than Mary’s desperate longing for a
husband. In this adolescent experience of “falling in love” we see a
developing realization of self and its capacity for further self-transcen¬
dence in the very process of reaching out to another in mutuality.
In sum, the integration of an identity is a creative act of self¬
understanding that goes beyond everything one has been before.30
In a very real sense, then, successful resolution of the identity crisis
is the very essence of self-transcendence. We turn now, therefore, to
the adolescent’s expanding cognitive power for self-transcendence
in formal operational thought.
The crisis of identity experienced in adolescence and the consol¬
idation of identity achieved in later youth are rendered possible by
the cognitive transformation that begins early in adolescence. Erik¬
son points out that “the adolescent learns to grasp the flux of time,
to anticipate the future in a coherent way, to perceive ideas and to
assent to ideals, to take-in short-an ideological position for which
the younger child is cognitively not prepared.” We shall follow
Piaget now, therefore, in tracking the integrated cognitive dimen¬
sion of personal development that complements the affective
dimension of identity, and grounds what Erikson calls a “historical

perspective, which makes room not only for imaginative specula¬
tion about all that could have happened in the past,” but also “a
sense of the irreversibility of significant events” and a “deepening
concern with the narrowing down of vast possibilities to a few
alternatives....”31 This historical perspective is what gives the self its
concrete, narrative quality, what grounds character.
The adolescent, in Piaget’s view, is a builder of systems and theo¬
ries. Although the concrete operations of the child are systematic,
they are focused on isolated problems. The child does not integrate
solutions into general theories, nor does the child abstract com¬
mon principles. In contrast, the adolescent, freed from the here
and now limitations of the concrete, exploits the systematic quali¬
ties of operational thinking. As formal operations emerge, the ado¬
lescent begins to locate the real within the possible, not merely in
the empirical. The adolescent’s formal operational thinking is
abstract: hypothetical-deductive, propositional, and combinatorial.
Its operations are second degree operations; like algebra in con¬
trast to arithmetic, it operates on the results of operations. It forms
abstract propositions from the results of concrete operations, sys¬
tematically combines all the possible variables, and works toward
the logical justification of hypotheses. Piaget argues that its implicit
structure is reflected explicitly in the integrated lattice-groups of
mathematical logic. The new power of formal thinking brings
together and transforms earlier strengths; it embodies the young
child’s fundamental wonder in a controlled manner, and continues
the older child’s concern for order, but opens it up to the hypothet¬
ical world of possibility.
This new cognitive power allows the adolescent to live not only
in the present (to which the child is mostly bound), but also in a
nonpresent, hypothetical world full of plans for the future, social as
well as individual, just when the identity crisis is forcing the adoles¬
cent to look toward the possibilities of the adult world. But until
formal thought actually meets the reality demands of the adult
world, it retains its peculiar form of egocentrism, an egocentrism
“manifested by belief in the omnipotence of reflection, as though
the world should submit itself to idealistic schemes rather than to
systems of reality.”32 We noted in Chapter 1 and will attend again in
Chapter 8 to Mary’s strengths as well as her limitations in formal

operational thinking.
The Interpersonal Self: Adolescent Moral and

Faith Development
The cognitive transformation of adolescence makes possible a
totally new dimension of interpersonal relations and, as a result, a
new sell. Whereas the child’s Imperial self was its needs, the ado¬
lescent is able to transfer these needs to the object-pole, where it
has them and is no longer subject to them. This new control of its
needs allows the adolescent self to coordinate them with the needs
of others, becoming mutual and empathic.33 Shared feelings are the
strength of the new Interpersonal self, but also its limitation, inso¬
far as the self cannot reflect on this shared reality because it is this
shared reality. Subject to its interpersonal matrix, the adolescent
self experiences conflict as it is torn between different shared reali¬
ties. The Interpersonal self is thus without the self-coherence
essential to identity. Indeed, just as the Stage 2 self imperialized
others for its own need-satisfaction, the Stage 3 Interpersonal self
needs others to be a self. For the Interpersonal self, to lose a signif¬
icant other is to lose its own self, to experience nothingness. It is
not difficult to see Mary’s intensely painful experiences as part of
this deadly dynamic.
The adolescent self at the Interpersonal stage is the self that is
moving into Kohlberg’s conventional moral orientation. This is the
developmental point when maintaining the expectations and rules
of family, group, and nation is seen as good in itself. At the early
adolescent’s moral Stage 3, right behavior means pleasing or help¬
ing others—seeking their approval by being a “nice” girl or a “good”
boy. Good intentions and conformity to social stereotypes of the
good person become important. Preoccupation with one’s own
interests gives way to shared feelings, expectations, and agreements.
We noted that Fowler sees Mary at this point of moral development,
but it is a Stage 3 seriously complicated by counterdependent rela¬
tionships. The older, Stage 4, adolescent assumes the social per¬
spective of the system that defines roles and rules, viewing
interpersonal relations in terms of their place in the social system. In
this perspective, good behavior means not only doing one’s duty
and respecting authority, but also working to maintain the social

order for its own sake.
The importance we have seen Erikson give to fidelity is reflected
in Fowler’s understanding of faith as the self moves into adoles¬
cence. Faith “must help provide a coherent and meaningful synthe¬
sis” of the complex and diverse involvements the self experiences
as it moves beyond the family into a much larger world during ado¬
lescence. Faith’s meaning is now certified by the authority of key
persons, those who “count” in the self’s eyes. This faithed meaning
must ground not only one’s identity but also one’s ideological ori¬
entation and commitment. Despite the cognitive transformation
that has already begun, the adolescent’s thinking is not yet critical,
so faith at this stage is mediated by symbols that are “dwelt in,” as
Polanyi would say, in a precritical or naive fashion. The interper¬
sonal quality of Stage 3’s Synthetic-Conventional faith is mani¬
fested in typical images of God, whose anthropomorphism has
taken a personal rather than physical character—God is friend,
companion, comforter, guide. Though Stage 3 faith makes its first
appearance in and is characteristic of adolescence, Mary is an
example of the many young and older adults who find a more or
less comfortable home in Synthetic-Conventional faith. As we saw
in Chapter 1, Mary constantly turns to God for guidance, but never
blames God when things go wrong.
The Institutional Self and Moral Relativism

In later adolescence, when the crisis of identity may be reaching
a resolution, there is the related possibility of a further transforma¬
tion of self. As we have just seen with Kegan, the early adolescent
Interpersonal self at Stage 3 is its relationships. With the creation
of a coherent identity spanning all its relationships, however, the
self is able to separate from its relationships. No longer divided
among its relationships, the self has a sense of self-ownership.
Because the self no longer is its relationships, but rather has them,
the self is now, at the subject-pole, what Kegan calls a psychic insti¬
tution. This Stage 4 Institutional self now coordinates all its rela¬
tionships, which have been shifted to the object-pole. Interpersonal
feelings of mutuality are still important, but not all-important as
they once were. They have now been relativized within the new
ultimate context of the self-system, which regulates them and

incorporates them into its Institutional balance.
Kegan uses Ibsen’s A Doll’s House to illustrate the shift from the
Interpersonal self to the Institutional self, from psychological
dependence to independence. He points out that Nora is not simply
rejecting the ideas of others, nor merely coming to some better ideas
of her own. Rather, Nora “is coming to a new set of ideas about her
ideas, about where ideas even come from, about who authorizes
them, or makes them true.” As Kegan stresses, “she is making a bid
for independence not merely from someone else’s ideas but from
anyone else’s ideas from a source external to her that can create and
validate her ideas. Her discovery is not just that she herself has dif¬
ferent ideas, but that she has been uncritically, unawarely identified
with external sources of ideas (her husband, her church, and her
culture).” To be uncritically identified with these sources is to be
unable to question their ideas. They are taken, says Kegan, as The
Truth. Nora is not so much (or even necessarily) rejecting the ideas,
values, and beliefs of her husband and pastor as she is rejecting her
previous uncritical stance toward them, her being defined by them.
Nora’s new, emerging independent self is not just a stronger (or
more assertive) version of her former dependent self. By relativizing
the ideas that had previously defined her, Nora now has them as
object, and no longer is them as subject. This, Kegan emphasizes, “is
a wholly different way of constituting what the self is, how it works, what
it is most about.”34Nora now explicitly recognizes a duty toward her¬
self, but in fact she had also been dutiful to herself, not just to oth¬
ers, as a “doll wife.” Her loyalty has not shifted from others to self;
rather, the very realities of other and self are now radically different.
Nora is a new self, but she is only at the beginning of a long journey
of critical self-creation.
The Institutional self is independent and strong, but its strength
is that of the bureaucrat, who is identified with the organization.
The very meaning of the Institutional self is derived from its organi¬
zation. Because this Stage 4 self is its organization, there can be no
review of the organization’s policies. Thus the Institutional self is
not only subject to its own policies, but vulnerable to the excesses
of control that corrode every unlimited organization. Just as the
Interpersonal self’s relationships needed to be relativized, so too
does the Institutional self’s organization; but that must wait. The
Institutional self is not a final goal, then, but it is a self that Mary
needs to realize, as difficult as transition to it will be for her.3’
Before ending our consideration of adolescence and moving on
to young adulthood, we should discuss the critical transitional
phase between conventional and postconventional morality, the rel¬
ativist orientation that Kohlberg names Stage 472-
The conventional moral orientation of Stage 4 is the culminating
achievement of many years of socialization. But because of the radi¬
cal freedom and creativity of personal consciousness, socialization
cannot be total, and so conventionality is not the last word in moral
development. The formal operational thought that makes Stage 4
social moral reasoning possible also grounds the critical question¬
ing that undermines the “taken for granted” absoluteness of con¬
ventional morality. In order for formal thinking to become socially
subversive, some psychological distance from one’s conventional
world is necessary. This often happens in our society through the
experience of leaving home and moving into college life. This dis¬
tance gives one the mental “elbow room” for reflective thought to
turn back on one’s self and one’s world and raise critical questions.
Of course, college life does not always effect this critical turn, and it
is not the only route to it. But the college experience can generate
truly critical thinking if one encounters people from other worlds
seriously, and if the resulting plurality of values is then mediated by
an effective liberalizing and liberating curriculum. That, at least, is
the theory; in actuality, all too often college just means four more
years of conventional socialization, not a radical critique of it.
In the psychosocial moratorium of identity questioning, radical
criticism of one’s world can bring about a relativistic breakthrough
of the conventional social system’s absolute givenness. Kohlberg
sees this radical relativism as a necessary condition for develop¬
ment to postconventional principled reasoning; the unquestioned
absoluteness of Stage 4 conventional morality must be undermined
if moral reasoning is to advance. Until principled moral reasoning
emerges, however, relativism reigns, and the validity of morality-
identified with the conventional reasoning of Stage 4—is rejected.
This Stage 472 relativistic period is ideally a transitional phase to a
principled postconventional orientation, but some people never
make the move to principled reasoning, and spend the rest of their
lives in the moral quicksand of relativism, with no reason to think
that one opinion could be better than another. These people under¬
stand conventional morality, but, having seen through its alleged
absoluteness, can never really go home to it again. In Kohlberg’s
view, of course, most people are spared this problem because they
never advance beyond the apparent safety of conventional morality
in the first place. Mary represents another, very particular type of
premature (preconventional) moral relativism. Thrown into the
countercultural world of a 1960s college campus after her junior
year of high school, she suffered in an especially severe way the
moral disorientation that afflicted many young people of the time.
THE YOUNG ADULT:

DESIRE FOR INTIMACY,
MUTUALITY, COMMITMENT
Intimacy, Ethical Strength, and Adult Knowing
The psychosocial hallmark of young adulthood is shared identity.
In Erikson’s life-cycle perspective of sequential crises, young adult¬
hood is characterized by the tension between intimacy and isola¬
tion. In this view, “the young adult, emerging from the search for
and the insistence on identity, is eager and willing to fuse his iden¬
tity with that of others.” The young adult, Erikson highlights, “is
ready for intimacy, that is, the capacity to commit himself to con¬
crete affiliations and partnerships and to develop the ethical
strength to abide by such commitments, even though they may call
for significant sacrifices and compromises.”36 This intimacy “is really
the ability to fuse your identity with somebody else’s without fear
that you’re going to lose something yourself.”37 Later we will distin¬
guish sharply between intimacy and fusion, but here I want to relate
the lack of fear of self-loss to identity. Only “consolidated identity
permits the self-abandonment demanded by intimate affiliations,
by passionate sexual unions, or by inspiring encounters.”38 This
relationship between consolidated identity and intimacy clearly
illustrates the developmental principle that, in Erikson’s words, “the
strength acquired at any stage is tested by the necessity to transcend
it in such a way that the individual can take chances in the next
stage with what was most vulnerably precious in the previous
one.”39 Thus identity is tested by intimacy In order for a young per¬

son to have the confident strength to risk reaching out to another m
an intimate relationship, he or she must have basically resolved the
adolescent crisis of identity The strength of consolidated identity
should not be confused with the popular “strong ego,” whose
strength is for self-centeredness, not for the self-transcendence of
mutual intimacy. Not surprisingly, Erikson identifies the specific
virtue of young adulthood as love, “the mutuality oj mates and part¬
ners in a shared identity, for the mutual verification through an expe¬
rience of finding oneself, as one loses oneself, in another.”40
We have just seen Erikson refer to “ethical strength” in connection
with the intimacy of young adulthood. In fact, what distinguishes
adulthood from adolescence, in Erikson’s view, is an ethical orienta¬
tion. As he sees moral development, the moral learning of childhood
is succeeded by the ideological experimentation of adolescence,
which in turn finally submits to the realistic demands of adult expe¬
rience, resulting in an ethical orientation. By “ethical” Erikson means
“a universal sense oj values assented to with insight and foresight, in
anticipation of immediate responsibilities, not the least of which is a
transmission of these values to the next generation.”41
The “insight” which makes the ethical orientation possible is
the realistic understanding characteristic of genuinely adult
knowing. With Piaget we have seen that specifically adult know¬
ing is achieved only when formal operations are complemented
by concrete experience of the work world. Only then does adoles¬
cent egocentrism surrender to realistic judgment. The systematic
and reflective power of formal operations remains, but now
always in dialectic tension with the conflicting realities of the
complex context of concrete social experience. Adult knowing
recognizes the relativity of every context, and this relativity
brings the totalistic logic of flighty adolescent thought back
down to earth. Finally, in its fullness, adult knowing overcomes
the idealistic adolescent’s demand for certitude with a realistic
appreciation of the relativity and probability inherent in the
search for genuine understanding. We will see the effects of this
specifically adult knowing on moral reasoning and faithmg soon,
but first we will consider what is happening with the self during
this period of young adulthood.
The Interindividual Self:

Postconventional Morality and Faith
We last saw Kegan’s self at the Institutional stage, immersed in
its own organization at the subject-pole. But with the affective and
cognitive developments we have just considered, the self in young
adulthood has the strength to transcend its psychic organization by
shifting it to the object-pole where the self can now direct and run
it. Now the self no longer is its organization. This Stage 5 freedom
from its psychic institution means that the self can relate to others
as fully personal individuals—people, as Kegan says, “who are
known ultimately in relation to their actual or potential recognition
of themselves and others as value-originating, system-generating,
history-making individuals.” Now the Interindividual self’s “com¬
munity is for the first time a ‘universal’ one in that all persons, by
virtue of their being persons, are eligible for membership.”42 We
will soon see how this quality of the Interindividual self is mani¬
fested in the moral and faith dimensions.
From the perspective of the Stage 5 Interindividual self, Kegan
makes a fundamental distinction between intimacy and fusion.
Erikson’s use above of “fusing” in relation to intimacy notwith¬
standing, Kegan insists on the necessity of distinguishing the qual¬
ity of interpersonal relationship characteristic of Stage 5 from that
of Stage 3. Because at Stage 5 there is a self to be brought to others,
truly intimate sharing of distinct identities is possible. In contrast,
at Stage 3, where the self is its relationships and thus is derived
from others, there is no distinct identity to share, only an
unformed identity to melt into fusion. And this is precisely Mary’s
problem as she reaches for an intimacy that she is still developmen-
tally incapable of.
Because the Stage 5 Interindividual self is capable of intimacy with
itself-that is, it can recognize and tolerate emotional conflict within
itself—it can enjoy genuine intimacy with others. In contrast, at Stage
3 the Interpersonal self does not have the strength to admit emo¬
tional conflict within itself, and at Stage 4 the stronger Institutional
self, though capable of recognizing internal conflict, sees it as a dan¬
gerous element-not to be tolerated but “handled” in the most cost
effective manner possible. Freed from subjection to its organization,
the self at Stage 5 no longer sees emotional conflict as ultimately
dangerous, and openly receives it in interior conversation. By tran¬

scending the “counterdependent independence” of Stage 4, the
Interindividual self can “give itself up” to another in interdepen¬
dence, where it finds itself as distinct in what Erikson calls “a
counter-pointing of identities.”43
Unlike the last stage in many developmental models, Kegan’s
Interindividual self is, by definition, not a closed end of isolated
independence. It is open, dynamic, flowing. It is, however, a deci¬
sive point in the process of differentiation and integration that
began with the creation of self and other in infancy. Unlike other
stages which emphasized either differentiation or integration, the
Interindividual balance features a distinct self (differentiation) that
is brought into being through the very sharing of itself (integra¬
tion). This stage is a true balance, tipped toward neither differenti¬
ation nor integration, because the two great yearnings of the
human spirit—for separateness or independence and for attach¬
ment or connectedness—now coexist in creative tension within a
self defined by their joint existence: relational autonomy.
We left Kohlberg’s analysis of moral reasoning development at
the transitional phase he calls Stage 472 relativism. There the cog¬
nitive power of advanced formal operations allowed reflective
thought to turn back critically on the self and its conventional
world. The resulting subversion of the taken-for-granted absolute¬
ness of conventional morality’s authority is, in Kohlberg’s view, a
necessary but not sufficient condition for the principled moral rea¬
soning of the postconventional orientation. In order to overcome
Stage 472 relativism and move positively toward principled moral
reasoning, critical reflective thought must be complemented by the
twofold experience of specifically adult responsibility: the experi¬
ence of making more or less irreversible decisions for one’s own life
and for the welfare of others. In our society, this usually, but not
always, means being financially independent on the one hand, and
being a parent on the other. Through such experience is the adoles¬
cent’s abstract, idealistic thinking transformed into the contextual
and dialectical thinking of the realistic adult. We will see the full¬
ness of this adult moral experience in the caring generativity of
Erikson’s next stage of the life cycle.
Kohlberg understands the normatively adult moral reasoning of
the postconventional orientation in terms of autonomous principles
that have validity independent of any external authority. The truly

autonomous, principled person is her own moral authority, the
author of her own moral life. The postconventional social perspective
is prior-to-society, with an emphasis on the legal at Stage 5 and on
the ethical at Stage 6.
Postconventional moral Stage 5 is characterized by Kohlberg as a
social-contract orientation with legal and utilitarian qualities. Here
critically examined rights and standards that are commonly agreed
upon define right behavior. Procedural rules for reaching agree¬
ment help to overcome the perceived relativism of personal values.
At this stage laws embodying social morality are subject to change
in order to enhance social life, not frozen as at Stage 4. Stage 5 is
reflected in the democratic structures of the United States, an
important political point considering Kohlberg’s judgment that
most American adults are at the conventional Stages 3 and 4. We
will switch over to the faith development track now, leaving the
completion of the postconventional moral orientation to our con¬
sideration of middle adulthood.
Just as a radical breakthrough in the development of moral rea¬
soning is required to move from a conventional to a postconven¬
tional orientation (specifically, from Stage 4 to Stage 5), so too is an
equally radical breakthrough necessary in faith development in
order to move from Fowler’s Stage 3 Synthetic-Conventional Faith
to Stage 4 Individuative-Reflective Faith. And if the moral reasoning
transition involves a relativistic moment, the faith transition
involves an atheistic moment—the excruciating dark night between
the death of one God and the birth of another. At that moment, of
course, it is the death that is experienced, while the birth is at best
a distant conceptual possibility, if anything. But on the other side of
nothingness is a breakthrough to, as Fowler puts it, a new self-
awareness and personal responsibility for one’s commitments,
lifestyle, beliefs, and attitudes. Not even experienced counselors
and directors can diminish the pain of losing one’s self, one’s
world, one’s God, but they can compassionately accompany a per¬
son through the suffering.
Demythologizing is also involved in the transition to the post-
conventional faith of Stage 4, the translation of multivalent sym¬
bols into clearer, more straightforward conceptual meanings. This
is the rationalism of one’s personal Enlightenment. And Fowler
points out that the young adult who experiences this transition to
Stage 4 is also forced to face certain unavoidable tensions hereto¬
fore submerged in a conforming, member-of-society perspective:
individuality vs. belonging to a community, subjectivity vs. objec¬
tivity, self-fulfillment vs. service to others, and the relative vs. the
absolute. At Stage 4 these universal tensions are on the table to be
dealt with, but not successfully resolved, as they are usually col¬
lapsed into one side or the other. When they arise in a client’s life,
such tensions make great demands on the knowledge of coun¬
selors and directors. At the point of Mary’s conversion, of course,
none of this had yet surfaced in an explicit way.
THE MIDDLE AND OLDER ADULT:

THE QUEST FOR INTERIORITY AND
FINAL INTEGRATION
Generativity, Universal Ethics, and Paradoxical Faith
The maturity of middle adulthood relates to the seventh crisis of
the life cycle that Erikson specifies as generativity versus stagna¬
tion. Here the meaning of generativity includes not only productiv¬
ity in the economic sense, but the bringing forth of “everything that
is generated from generation to generation: children, products,
ideas, and works of art.”44 But for Erikson generativity is “primarily
the concern with establishing and guiding the next generation.”45
This is directly connected with Erikson’s psychosocial understand¬
ing that “adult man is so constituted as to need to be needed lest he
suffer the mental deformation of self-absorption, in which he
becomes his own infant and pet.”46 From the successful resolution
of the crisis of generativity emerges the strength of care, “the broad¬
ening concern for what has been generated by love, necessity, or
accident-a concern that must consistently overcome the ambiva¬
lence adhering to irreversible obligation and the narrowness of
self-concern.”47 Such generative caring, of course, lies at the heart
of the ethical orientation. Indeed, it is precisely this caring that
Carol Gilligan has focused on in her effort to delineate the charac¬
teristic moral strength of women. By doing so, she has helped us to
see that the fully human goal of moral development is an integrated
caring justice.48 To consider the full universality of this orientation,

we turn now to Kohlberg’s Stage 6.
While an orientation to internal decisions of conscience devel¬
ops from Kohlberg’s Stage 5 contract viewpoint, Stage 5 lacks the
comprehensive, universal, and consistent ethical principles that
constitute Stage 6, the highest stage of moral reasoning. Stage 6’s
defining elements are the “universal principles of justice, of the rec¬
iprocity and equality of human rights, and of respect for the dignity
of human beings as individual persons.”49 Though Stage 6 moral
judgments are surely judgments of personal conscience, they are
the judgments of a conscience that subjects itself to universal prin¬
ciples. Persons at moral Stage 6 are autonomous in terms of con¬
ventional morality, but always rooted in fundamental human values
formalized in universal ethical principles. These universal princi¬
ples are not like the concrete moral rules of Stage 4, approving or
disapproving certain kinds of actions (such as, for example, the
Ten Commandments), but more like formal, abstract versions of
values or ideals (like, for example, the Golden Rule or the categori¬
cal imperative). The role of universal ethical principles is not to tell
us exactly how to act or not to act, but to serve as a higher ethical
court, as a standard against which moral rules can be critically
appraised. To take one clear example from social morality in the
Western world, the ancient moral rules allowing slavery finally col¬
lapsed in the nineteenth century under the critique of the universal
ethical principles of justice and the dignity of the human person.
With this much said about the highest stage of moral reasoning, we
can turn now to the upper reaches of faith development.
At Stage 4 of faith development we saw a breakthrough to new self-
awareness and personal responsibility accompanied by the one-sided
collapse of universal tensions and the demythologizing of multivalent
symbols. The Conjunctive (Paradoxical-Consolidative) Faith of Stage
5 maintains the heightened sense of self, but goes a long way toward
overcoming the reductionism of Stage 4. Now the “other” is taken
with full seriousness. Thus the (possibly thirty-something) adult at
Stage 5 “affirms and lives out its own commitments and beliefs in
such a way as to honor that which is true in the lives of others without
denying the truth of its own.”50
Faith Stage 5 is the point at which a person experiences what
Paul Ricoeur has named the “second naivete,” the post-critical
no THE DESIRING SELF
retrieval of the dynamic symbol lost in the personal Enlightenment

of Stage 4’s interest in clarity and certainty. This recognition of the
symbolic as real is best understood as a quality of genuinely critical
knowing. At Stage 5 the critical self no longer qualifies the sym¬
bolic with a “merely.” As part of its openness to the other, the self is
now ready to encounter the personal and social unconscious, with
all its mysterious and powerful riches. This radical openness and
symbolic power of Stage 5 support the generative adult in its com¬
mitment to universal ethical principles, a commitment that
includes full awareness of the cost.
Integrity and Universalizing Faith

Carl Jung has pointed out that in the second half of life we are
called in a special way to enter our mteriority, and there to explore
questions about the ultimate meaning of life, questions that are
essentially religious.51 Similarly, in the advanced years of adulthood
Erikson specifies the last of the life-cycle crises, integrity vs.
despair. “In the aging person who has taken care of things and
people and has adapted to the triumphs and disappointments of
being, by necessity, the originator of others and the generator of
things and ideas—only in him the fruit of the seven stages gradually
ripens.”52 The strength appropriate to this stage “takes the form of
wisdom in its many connotations—ripened wits,' accumulated
knowledge, inclusive understanding, and mature judgment.” The
wisdom of integrity loves life in the face of death. As despair is the
natural result of a self-centered life, so integrity and wisdom are the
natural outcome of a self-transcending life. While meaningful old
age can give the indispensable perspective of an integrated heritage
to the next generations, the end of the life cycle also raises “ulti¬
mate concerns.” In this context, Erikson’s basic point is that “what¬
ever chance man has to transcend the limitations of his self seems
to depend on his full (if not tragic) engagement in the one and only
life cycle permitted to him in the sequence of generations.”53 Hav¬
ing raised this fundamental religious question, we will now follow
it up in the perspectives of Kohlberg and Fowler.
The fact that the moral heroes Kohlberg cites as models of Stage
6—Martin Luther King, tor example—were also deeply religious led
him to reflect on “the relation of the development of religious faith
to the development of moral principles.”54 In Kohlberg’s under¬

standing of the moral stages, even Stage 6 provides only an imper¬
fect resolution to the problem of life’s meaning, what Kohlberg
takes to be the essence of Erikson’s crisis of integrity vs. despair.
Even for someone with an awareness of the universal principles of
justice, there still remains the fundamental issue of justifying jus¬
tice: “Why be just in a universe full of injustice?” While this ques¬
tion can be raised at any moral stage, Kohlberg thinks that it
“cannot arise on a psychologically serious level until a man has
attained moral principles and lived a life in terms of these princi¬
ples for a considerable length of time.”55 Though Stage 6 may over¬
come the skeptical doubts of moral relativism, even universal
ethical principles cannot overcome the radical doubt of “Why be
moral at all?” And this question entails the most profound existen¬
tial questions like “Why live?” or “How face death?” In other words,
ultimate moral maturity requires answers to questions that are not
really moral but religious.
In Kohlberg’s assessment, these questions cannot be answered
on purely rational grounds, but he does think there are meaningful
solutions to religious questions that are “compatible with rational
science and principled ethics.” He employs a metaphorical Stage 7
to point toward these religious solutions. Whether God language is
used or not, Stage 7 solutions involve nonegoistic or nondualistic
contemplative experience. As Kohlberg understands it, the essence
of this experience is “the sense of being a part of the whole of life
and the adoption of a cosmic as opposed to a universal humanistic
(Stage 6) perspective.” After an initial phase of despair, this Stage 7
cosmic perspective becomes a state of mind in which “we identify
ourselves with the cosmic or infinite perspective, itself; we value life
from its standpoint.”56 This perspective brings us to Fowler’s high¬
est faith stage.
Fowler’s Stage 6 EJniversalizing Faith goes beyond Stage 5’s para¬
doxical balancing of “opposites” by transcending all dichotomies
in an identification with all Being, including the transcendent, in a
community of universal inclusiveness. At Stage 6 one “becomes a
disciplined, activist incarnation of the imperatives of absolute love
and justice....”57 Thus the paradox of being-for-others disappears. At
Stage 6 one is being most truly oneself in being for others. Full self-
actualization is realized in full self-transcendence. Here, therefore,
too, is the most profound self-love, now identified with neighbor-

love. In sum, across the personal spectrum—from the cognitive and
affective dimensions to the moral and faith dimensions—develop¬
ment of the self occurs through self-transcendence: self-realization
is self-transcendence. In the next chapter we will consider the cru¬
cial points in this developing realization of self-transcendence
called conversions.
Chapter 7
The Self in Radical

Transformation:
Spiritual Direction
for Christian Conversion
A central thesis of this study of the desiring self is that self-tran¬

scendence, properly understood, is the criterion of both authentic
self-realization and the gospel’s call to loving service of the neigh¬
bor. As such, self-transcendence is the goal of both pastoral coun¬
seling and spiritual direction. Although pastoral counseling and
spiritual direction, as we saw in Clinebell’s “Revised Model,” are
not separate realities in practice, they can be distinguished in terms
of development and conversion. Pastoral counseling, as we have
seen, seeks to promote self-transcendence by facilitating personal
development, especially when development faces serious obsta¬
cles. If pastoral counseling deals with specific developmental and
other problems in a client’s life, spiritual direction can be said to
address the very meaning of the client’s life itself, to address the
realization of the self’s most radical desire, of its fullest, divine
potential. Spiritual direction, in other words, aims at realizing the
self-transcending possibilities of a client’s life by encouraging radi¬
cal transformation of the self within its ongoing development, by
encouraging, in a word, conversion.1 As an aid in discerning such
conversions, or their possibilities, in clients like Mary, for example,
this chapter will suggest developmental guidelines for explicating
the biblical meaning of conversion as a call to the fullness of life.
In theJudeo-Christian tradition, conversion has first and foremost
113
meant a turning, redirection, change of heart, renewal. It was no acci¬

dent that John the Baptist preached repentance for sin. He was, after
all, in that long line of Hebrew prophets who called their people to
turn from sin to God. And after John’s arrest, Jesus continued the call
to conversion as he proclaimed the good news of God in Galilee: “This
is the time of fulfillment. The reign of God is at hand! Reform your
lives and believe in the gospel!” (Mk 1:15)
From the beginning, then, conversion has meant return—return
to God from sinful ways. And so it has been throughout Christian
history as the community of God’s people has been blessed with
special moments of renewal, with individual and corporate trans¬
formations of life, some particularly striking—one thinks of Augus¬
tine and Monica, Francis and Clare, Ignatius and Teresa—most
rather ordinary, but all of them important steps on the return to
God’s ways. The phrase, “return to God’s ways,” suggests a journey,
and that is how many Christians today experience conversion: a
long, day after day, year after year struggle through rough desert
terrain, but inspired by the joyful goal of a “promised land” of love
and justice, and supported by the caring hand of God’s presence.
Tike many other personal and experiential realities, however,
conversion has not always had a prominent place in institutional¬
ized Christianity. At different periods, including the twentieth cen¬
tury, it even seems to have been “lost” for a time. In recent decades,
however, conversion has been rediscovered by Christians. It has
even become fashionable-from the White House, to Wall Street, to
the NFL. This should be good news. The problem from a spiritual
direction perspective, however, is that, in its popularity, conversion
can mean just about anything anyone wants it to mean. Not all
“conversions” are authentically Christian. And, if we needed con¬
vincing, this fact was brought home to us rather rudely not too
many years ago when the Christian sideshow of TV evangelism
exposed its seamy underbelly to the world-a phenomenon that
journalists like Ted Koppel found irresistibly fascinating.
So, if conversion really is fundamental to Christian life, spiritual
directors must ask some tough, critical questions about the nature
of this personal reality that is the key to a life of self-transcendence.
They need to establish criteria for discerning authentic from inau¬
thentic conversions. A good place to start is with William James,
who really defined the rules of the modern conversion game at the
SPIRITUAL DIRECTION FOR CHRISTIAN CONVERSION 115
turn of the century in his classic Varieties of Religious Experience.

James saw conversion as a psychological process of unification of a
divided self. In his interpretation, conversion is primarily a phe¬
nomenon of adolescence or youth, responding to what Erik Enk-
son would later call an identity crisis. And, for James, conversion is
not essentially religious, since religion is only one of the many
forms the psychological process of unification may take.2 When
this essentially psychological process occurs in an explicitly reli¬
gious context, like nineteenth-century Protestant revivalism, it may
assume the language, images, and color of religion, but this does
not make it a radically religious experience.
None of this is meant to discredit James’s valuable interpreta¬
tion, but merely to identify it as primarily focused on the psycho¬
logical and the adolescent. Indeed, the value of James’s approach
continues, with more systematic precision, in Erikson’s psychoso¬
cial theory of development. But Erikson not only locates James’s
understanding of conversion in the identity crisis of adolescence or
youth, he also relativizes it within a larger lifespan context, a con¬
text that suggests a more complex, differentiated understanding of
conversion, including the possibility of a truly radical religious
dimension. From the Eriksonian perspective, the last four crises of
the life cycle (identity, intimacy, generativity, and integrity) may all
be regarded as opportunities for fundamental conversions.
At this point, in order to keep the discussion as concrete as possi¬
ble, I will introduce a real life example of conversion in the person of
Thomas Merton, the young convert to Roman Catholicism who lived
his adult life as a Trappist monk and died in Bangkok pursuing con¬
templative dialogue with Buddhist monks. We have already consid¬
ered Merton’s understanding of the true self; now we will look at key
points in his life experience. Merton is a particularly good example
in this context of pastoral counseling and spiritual direction because
he not only experienced conversion himself, and wrote about it per¬
ceptively, but he also had an acute interest in psychotherapy. Indeed,
he wrote about both conversion and psychotherapy in terms of self¬
transcendence. Sharing this study’s basic presuppositions, Merton
saw a self-transcending realization as the only fully authentic realiza¬
tion of the human person’s potential. He wrote about this full self¬
transcendence—in contrast to the social adjustment of the false
self-as a “final integration” of the true self, a state of transcultural
maturity. For Merton, the “fully born” person “apprehends his life
fully and wholly from an inner ground that is at once more universal
than the empirical ego and yet entirely his own.” Having “attained a
deeper, fuller identity than that of his limited ego-self,” the finally
integrated person is in a way identified with everybody—he is “all
things to all men.”3 This is the goal of pastoral counseling and spiri¬
tual direction as they seek to liberate the radical personal desire for
self-transcendence. In many minds, unfortunately, Merton and con¬
version have been linked to his youthful conversion to Roman
Catholicism.4 But to focus on the young Merton's conversion is to
obscure the deeper religious experience of his mature years, to miss
the profound dimensions of conversion available only in adulthood.5
Here, employing the work of the developmental theorists we saw
in the previous chapter, I will set Bernard Lonergan’s multidimen¬
sional view of conversion into a lifespan context, and use it to
explicate Merton’s life as a continuing process of transformation
with four distinct, specifiable moments of conversion. In its sim¬
plest terms, conversion for Lonergan is an about-face, a radical
reorientation of one’s life. His analysis specifies cognitive, moral,
affective, and religious conversions.6 In developmental terms, these
conversions can be situated, respectively, within the analyses of
Piaget on cognition, Kohlberg on moral reasoning, Erikson on psy¬
chosocial affectivity, and Fowler on faith. Cognitive conversion is
the critical discovery of oneself as a knower. Moral conversion is
the choice of value as a criterion for decision. Affective conversion
is a falling-in-love which reorients the dynamic thrust of one’s life
toward others. Religious conversion, like affective, is a falling-in¬
love that establishes a person as a dynamic principle of benevo¬
lence and beneficence. But in religious conversion one falls in love
with God, one is grasped by ultimate concern. Being-in-love with
God is “total and permanent self-surrender without conditions,
qualifications, reservations.” Here I shall use cognitive conversion
to distinguish between two forms of moral conversion: basic,
uncritical moral conversion and critical moral conversion. (The
same distinction based on the presence or absence of cognitive
conversion also applies to affective and religious conversions.)
This chapter’s aim is to expand and enrich our understanding of
conversion as a foundational moral-religious reality across the life¬
span. Merton’s life experience will give concrete shape to the con-
version theory, and illustrate its adequacy for the full complexity of
the moral-religious life.
The chapter will trace Merton’s distinct moments of conversion in
chronological order. In successive sections we shall consider (1) Mer¬
ton’s early conversion as a basic moral conversion, a new way of living
rooted in the virtues of fidelity and justice; (2) his deepening and
confirmation of this first conversion in the monastery as an affective
conversion, a new way of loving grounded in generosity and forgive¬
ness; (3) his taking full cognitive possession of this deepened conver¬
sion and expanding it socially and politically as a critical moral
conversion, a new way of knowing anchored in empathy and humil¬
ity; and finally (4) his radical relativization of the autonomy of this
moral-affective conversion in total surrender as a religious conversion,
a new way of being secured in the realities of gift and surrender. With
Merton, of course, all these conversions are dimensions of a single,
ongoing personal story that is fundamentally Christian, though, as
we shall see, eventually open to every form of authentic religious
experience. Such openness to the other major religious traditions is
now indispensable for the Christian spiritual director.
The point of this framework is not to put conversion in a
straightjacket by claiming that there are only certain kinds of con¬
version and that they can only occur at certain moments. The
point, rather, is to highlight optimal times in a person’s life when
some radical conversion possibilities are at their height, thus allow¬
ing us to discern them more easily and to support them more effec¬
tively. Such a framework will also make it eminently clear that
Christian conversion is a lifelong enterprise. Renewal is never com¬
plete; each season of life, rather, is an opportunity for a conversion
with a particular shape and meaning of its own.
In speaking of Christian conversion, of course, I am not referring
only or primarily to the initial process of becoming a Christian, of
joining a Christian church, which is certainly a conversion when it
marks a significant interior turning in one’s life. For conversion also
and especially means the interior transformation that may be expe¬
rienced by a person who is already a Christian, either from birth or
through an earlier conversion. So Christian conversion is not just a
matter of believing something new, of affirming a new faith, of
adopting a new story. Conversion is not just a change of content, a
switching over from one faith story to another. But, much more
importantly, Christian conversion is the introduction of a new kind

of story into one’s life, a story with its own intrinsic requirements
for moral, affective, cognitive, and religious transformation.
Christian conversion demands that one live, love, understand,
and even be in a new way. Christians must be morally converted,
but moral conversion is not first of all a matter of choosing new
values (content), but of choosing value as the criterion of one’s
choices. Christians must be affectively converted, but affective
conversion is not primarily a question of loving someone new
(content), but of allowing love to become the central reality, the
dynamic principle of one’s life. Christians must be cognitively
converted, but cognitive conversion is not first of all knowing
something new (content), but understanding one’s knowing, and
thus oneself, in a new way. And Christians must be religiously
converted, but religious conversion is not primarily a matter of
new forms of prayer and worship (content), but of allowing God
to move from the edges to the center of one’s life, transforming
one’s very way of being. Radical Christian conversion, then, is not
simply a change of content, but a structural transformation of the
self. Now, to see what all this means in concrete Christian experi¬
ence, we turn to the life of Thomas Merton.
BASIC MORAL CONVERSION: A NEW WAY OF LIVING

Merton’s youthful conversion to Roman Catholicism was clearly
a Christian conversion with important cognitive, affective, moral,
and religious qualities. By stressing here the moral dimension, I do
not mean to deny Merton’s conversion its multiple qualities or its
Christian character. I simply intend to identify it specifically as a
Christian moral conversion.7
Merton’s years as a student at Columbia University in the late
1930s constituted a period of sustained development in his moral
judgment and decision-making powers. For much of that time he
was engaged in an almost singleminded effort to reach a decision-
a decision constitutive of his very life, of the kind of person he
would be. On his return to the United States from Cambridge Uni¬
versity in 1934 he was, at age nineteen, in the middle of an
extended period of self-centered licentiousness he had thrown
himself into after his father’s death three years earlier. Although he
had made some commitment to Communism, Merton would look
back on this time and judge “that my inspiration to do something
good for mankind had been pretty feeble and abstract from the
start. I was still interested in doing good for only one person in the
world—myself.” By 1937 a physical breakdown reflected the inner
life of the “big man on campus.” “I had done what I intended, and
now I found that it was I who was emptied and robbed and gutted.
What a strange thing! In filling myself, I had emptied myself.”8
In Merton’s struggle toward conversion and decision for the
monastic priesthood, then, we have the young man in what Erikson’s
psychosocial life cycle names an identity crisis.9 Erikson’s interpreta¬
tion of identity resolution in terms of a commitment in fidelity to
value specifies an intrinsically moral dimension in youthful conver¬
sion. This commitment can be seen as the personal, affective correla¬
tive to the key transition from preconventional to conventional moral
reasoning specified by Kohlberg’s structural stage theory.10
While Kohlberg gives no attention to conversion, careful reflection
on the nature of his structural stages indicates that stage transition
(especially between major levels) is a form of conversion. Kohlberg
claims that the transition from preconventional to conventional moral
reasoning occurs at the earliest in the adolescent, occasioned in part
by the emergence of what Piaget calls formal operations.11 Fundamen¬
tally this transition is a shift from a pre-moral to a moral orientation,
that is, from a radically egocentric orientation in which the criterion
for decision is self-interested satisfaction (Merton at Cambridge and
in his early years at Columbia), to a social orientation in which the cri¬
terion for decision is value (Merton in his call to Catholicism and the
monastery). When structural and psychosocial stages coincide, moral
conversion to value meshes perfectly with the adolescent’s discovery
of self in fidelity. And from this emerges a new sense of justice. Moral
conversion’s orientation to persons and society gives fairness a new
meaning. No longer does fairness mean “getting what I want” (adults
know how to translate the ten-year-old’s cry, “it’s not fair!’’-even if we
use it occasionally ourselves). Through moral conversion fairness
becomes a sense of justice: recognizing one’s obligation to respect the
rights of everyone.
Merton’s conversion was not simply the resolution of an iden¬
tity crisis clothed in pious Christian language, as so many classic
adolescent conversion accounts seem to be. By 1941 Merton had

not only “developed a conscience” as he put it, he had also commit¬
ted himself to Christian values in a solidly conventional way
through a basic moral conversion. Merton’s self-discovery did not
occur quickly or easily, but when it did come forth, his private mir¬
ror of self-satisfied narcissism was shattered and transformed into
the powerful telescope of a moral conversion reaching out to the
universe of value. Still, as personally authentic and life-transforming
as Merton’s 1938-1941 Christian conversion was, I am suggesting
that it was essentially a conventional, uncritical conversion to the
given, unquestioned values and beliefs of the Catholic Church. In
the church and the monastery he found the home he had sought
ever since his mother’s death when he was six years old.12
From the perspective of spiritual direction, it is clear that Chris¬
tian moral conversion is an ongoing, life-long process, never to be
taken for granted, always in need of attention. A Christian’s fidelity
to justice and the other values of Christian life must constantly be
deepened and expanded. This is surely one of the most fundamen¬
tal and important areas for discernment.
AFFECTIVE CONVERSION:
A NEW WAY OF LOVING
Moral conversion to value calls us to move beyond the self; it is
more a challenge than an achievement; it discloses the gap between
the self we are and self we should be. The challenge to close that
gap is the challenge to move beyond ourselves not only in our
knowing but also in our deciding and our acting-the challenge to
make our action consistent with our judgment of what we should
do and should be. But we only move beyond ourselves with any
regularity insofar as we fall in love. Such falling-in-love enables us
to escape the centripetal force of our persistent egocentric gravity.
Then we become beings-in-love, existential principles of responsi¬
ble action consistent with our best judgment. The young adult’s
Eriksonian crisis of intimacy with its defining strength of love is
one clear occasion for such falling-in-love, a lundamental reloca¬
tion of the self’s dynamic center of gravity.13 For this is the time
when, more or less secure in our own identity, we can—even must—
risk that identity by falling in love. We are personally strong in

reaching out, in sharing ourselves, not in defensively protecting
ourselves in isolation.
Lonergan has suggested that a person is affectively self-transcen¬
dent when the isolation of the individual is broken and he or she
spontaneously acts not just for self but for others as well. Further,
when a person falls in love, his or her love is embodied not just in this
or that act or even in any series of acts, but in a dynamic state of being-
in-love. Such being-in-love is the concrete first principle from which a
person’s affective life flows: “one’s desires and fears, one’s joys and
sorrows, one’s discernment of values, one’s decisions and deeds.”14
This falling-in-love, in other words, is a more or less radical transfor¬
mation of a person’s life: affective conversion. Such conversion turns
one’s self, shifts one’s orientation, from an absorption in one’s own
interests to concern for the good of others. Just as we can live for the
good of a beloved, or of our children, when we count no sacrifice too
great, so our love can also extend to the entire human family. Jesus’
example of a life in which no one is a stranger can become a reality in
us. Affective conversion, then, is the concrete possibility of overcom¬
ing moral impotence, of not only being able to make a decision to
commit oneself to a course of action or direction of life judged worth¬
while or personally appropriate, but of being able to execute that deci¬
sion over the long haul against serious obstacles.
In sum, affective conversion is a transformation of desire: a turn¬
ing from desire for possession to desire for generosity. It is a reori¬
entation from the possessiveness rooted in obsessive concern for
one’s own needs to a self-giving in intimate love of others. Along
with the other conversions we are discussing, this transformation
of desire lies at the living center of Christian experience. In the
shared identity of concern it nourishes in love lies the only possi¬
bility of genuine forgiveness.
Merton’s deep friendships with students and teachers at Colum¬
bia certainly constituted a fundamental element in his conversion
and decision for the monastery. Those friendships—and many later
ones—remained important as Merton’s affective life continued to
develop in various ways in the monastery, especially as he began to
teach and guide young monks in the 1950s. Perhaps an experience
Merton relates from 1958, as he is beginning to appreciate compas¬
sion for the world, best represents affective conversion in his journey.
The crucial experience occurred during a visit to Louisville: “At

the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping dis¬
trict, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved
all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not
be alien to one another even though we were total strangers.” This
experience was like waking from a “dream of separateness, of spu¬
rious self isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation
and supposed holiness.” With a sudden clarity, as he watched
people go by about their daily lives, Merton saw that although
monks are “out of this world” they continue “in the same world as
everybody else, the world of the bomb, the world of race hatred, the
world of technology, the world of mass media, big business, revolu¬
tion, and all the rest.” Merton ends his published reflections on
this discovery with a prayer of gratitude: “Thank God, thank God
that I am like other men, that I am only a man among others.”15
Eight years later Merton would discover just how much he really
was a man like other men. In 1966, at the age of fifty-one, Merton
fell in love with a nineteen-year-old student nurse who had been
assigned to care for him as he was recovering from back surgery
just before Easter. Though he agonized for the rest of the year in a
struggle between this love and his vows, this experience of loving
and being loved seems to have brought Merton’s affective conver¬
sion to a full and concrete realization. But, as David Cooper points
out, what Merton learned about the dichotomy in himself between
an ideal self and the actual self came at the cost of what he would
describe as the “terrible interior...crisis” and extremely severe
anguish that precedes “final integration.”16
What we have seen about affective conversion makes it obvious, I
think, that the encouragement, or nourishment, of such conversion
must be at the center of the spiritual direction process. Authentic
Christian living demands prayerful reflection on our possibilities for
more expansive generosity and ever deeper forgiveness.
CRITICAL MORAL CONVERSION:

A NEW WAY OF KNOWING
Cognitive development, which we have seen Piaget trace from the
infant’s egocentrism to the adult’s dialectical realism, is fundamental
not only to one’s understanding of the world, but also to self-under¬

standing. For insofar as a person who has developed through con¬
crete and formal operations to adult realistic judgment can reflect
this cognitive power back on the self, precisely as a knower, there is
beyond cognitive development also the possibility of cognitive con¬
version: the critical recognition of the constitutive and normative role
of one’s own judgment in knowing reality and therefore value. A per¬
son who experiences such critical understanding of self as knower
ceases to look somewhere “out there” beyond the self for a criterion
of the real or the valuable. Cognitive conversion consists precisely in
discovering that criterion in the dynamic structure of one’s own real¬
istic judgment. Despite appearances, it is precisely because cognitive
conversion is rooted in the discovery of one’s reality as a critical
knower that it leads not to arrogance but to humility.
Kohlberg’s postconventional level of moral reasoning, rooted in
self-chosen, universal ethical principles, requires exactly this kind
of cognitive conversion in the moral dimension, that is, critical
moral conversion. Basic moral conversion to conventional morality
is essentially uncritical, locating authority in absolutely given social
values. To become postconventional one must not only relativize
conventional values, but one must discover the final criterion of
value in one’s own critical judgment, and thereby become the
author of one’s own moral life. Critical moral conversion to a post-
conventional stance goes beyond restructuring one’s horizon in
terms of value, then, by grounding that horizon in the reality of
oneself as a critical, originating value.17
By the late 1950s and early 1960s there was emerging in Merton
an awareness of, concern for, and involvement in the social and
political dimensions of life, especially the issues of racism and
peace.18 In order to understand this emergence of critical social con¬
sciousness, we must recall not only the young Merton’s concern
about Harlem and the outbreak of World War II before he “left the
world” for the monastery,19 but also his positive reassessment of “the
world,” his profound transformational experience of 1949-50, the
continuing growth of his critical thinking especially as connected
with his strained relationship with the Abbot,20 and his relationship
of loving care and responsibility for the scholastics and novices he
served as Master.21 This latter responsibility-Erikson’s generativ-
ity—was Merton’s preparatory school for later social commitment.22
It was precisely the kind of adult experience of serious responsibil¬

ity for others which Kohlberg claims is a sine qua non for develop¬
ment to a postconventional moral orientation.23 Such responsible
caring itself requires accurate insight into the realities of ourselves
and others.
Caring is the active expression of empathy, the ability to under¬
stand and feel with the needs of others, to share and experience
their perspectives as vividly as our own. But if empathy, the cogni¬
tive root of compassion, is a realistic understanding of others, its
“flip side” is humility, a realistic view of ourselves. The ability to
become more “subjective” regarding others and more “objective”
regarding ourselves is the fruit of cognitive conversion, of taking
possession of our critical, realistic understanding. Humility is not
pious self-abasement any more than empathy is sentimental pity;
both consist of truthful insight into ourselves and others. Both are
required for adult, fully human moral lives.
The strong personal security needs that generated Merton’s youth¬
ful conversion to Roman Catholicism, along with the authority-
centered nature of monastic life, had put a drag on the development
of his moral reasoning. But Merton’s restless spirit would not be tied
down, and once he had broken through the monastic walls of conven¬
tional morality into the fresh air of critical inquiry, his moral con¬
sciousness needed only the fertile ground of existential responsibility
for others in order to take root and finally blossom into a postconven¬
tional orientation of autonomous conscience. Merton’s development
was slow, and at times extremely painful, but the roots went deep and
laid a sound support system for a conscience of universal ethical prin¬
ciples whose branches would reach to the most important and diffi¬
cult social-political problems of his day.
The social dimension and principled quality of Merton’s mature
moral orientation is probably best illustrated by his commitment to
the cause of world peace, especially on issues of nuclear warfare.
His mature orientation stands in sharp contrast to how the young
Merton had dealt with the issue of war back in 1941, just before he
entered the monastery. Then, although he had been personally
inclined to view killing in war as insupportable on gospel grounds,
Merton, the new Catholic convert, made his decision to register for
the draft (as a noncombatant objector) on the basis of the church’s
officially approved just war theory.24 His moral reasoning then was
clearly an advance in commitment over the days of his Communist

peace protests, but it was just as clearly conventional, tied to the
authority of the ecclesiastical system.
Twenty years later, however, with the United States and the
Soviet Union head to head in a nuclear arms race that, after much
study and deliberation, he judged to be immoral, Merton took a
public, independent stand that directly challenged church as well
as government authority Merton felt that many Christian leaders,
in their kneejerk reaction to the threat of atheistic Communism,
were as irresponsible in their enthusiastic support of nuclear
overkill as were the pragmatic politicians, for whom the moral issue
was irrelevant.
There was no doubt about Merton’s own response to this call to
moral and political authenticity. He became something of a leader
within the opposition to the nuclear buildup as he published a
stream of articles on the issue. This was not a popular stand to
take, especially in the early 1960s, but Merton had to speak out.
Even his superiors’ attempt to silence him on the topic of peace—
the same year as Pope John XXIII’s Pacem in Terris-had only tem¬
porary success; on this issue his voice could not be still. Indeed,
before long, this autonomous moral voice would be speaking out as
one of the early opponents of the United States’ involvement in
Vietnam.25 The high-pitched, untrained moral voice of the young
Communist that had changed into that of the conventional young
Catholic, and had slowly matured through the years of monastic
silence, had in the early 1960s finally found its authentic postcon-
ventional pitch, through a critical moral conversion.
Merton’s clearly autonomous, principled stance on moral issues,
particularly that of peace, leaves no doubt that he had experienced a
cognitive conversion leading to the radical appropriation of his own
critical power. Moreover, because this critical cognitive conversion
was experienced by a contemplative poet in a context that was not
only intrinsically moral but fundamentally religious, there was no
possibility of its taking the rationalistic shape of absolute autonomy.
Merton was a man who breathed the air of divine mystery. He took
critical possession of his autonomous mind, but with paradox and
contingency in his blood, he was immune to the reductionist illusion
of any imperialistic rationalism. Merton’s converted intelligence was
a critical mmd that was in search of and would settle for nothing less
than the one true Absolute that is mystery.
For many in spiritual direction, Merton’s expansion from an
uncritical personal piety to the social and political dimensions of
Christian moral life may be seen as a normative model. The empathy
and humility born of cognitive conversion must be guided to seek the
healing of both personal relationships and the structures of society.
RELIGIOUS CONVERSION: A NEW WAY OF BEING

Carl Jung, as we have seen, regarded the second half of life as a
special time for interior exploration about the ultimate meaning of
life. Commenting on Jung’s point, Seward Hiltner asserts that at
mid-life, conversion means life or death. After devoting the first
half of life to the external affairs of family and livelihood, one must
now face the interior depths. The existential clock is ticking. One
either reflects at this point, or regresses. Now it is either conversion
or the catastrophe of denial and mediocrity.26
As we noted in the previous chapter, Kohlberg has speculated
about the possibility of a seventh, religious stage following the full
development of moral reasoning.27 He sees such a stage beginning
in the despair of perceiving human life as finite from the perspec¬
tive of the infinite-the meaninglessness of life in the face of death,
for example. For him, “Stage 7” points to what he regards as “mean¬
ingful solutions’ to the question “why live” or “why be moral,” that
is, questions about the meaning of life. In his view, these questions
can be asked in their ultimate religious sense only by the person at
Stage 6 who has attempted to live an autonomous, principled life,
and inevitably failed. Only such a person can fully appreciate the
radical moral impotence, the utter finiteness of human existence.
The essence of nonegoistic or nondualistic contemplative expe¬
rience involved in these “Stage 7” solutions is, as Kohlberg puts it,
“the sense of being a part of the whole of life and the adoption of a
cosmic as opposed to a universal humanistic (Stage 6) perspec¬
tive.” The resolution of the initial despair in this cosmic perspective
leads to a state of mind in which “we identify ourselves with the
cosmic or infinite perspective, itself; we value from its standpoint.”
Such a state of mmd is temporarily achieved even by people who
are not “religious” when, on a mountaintop or before the ocean,

they sense the unity of the whole and themselves as part of that
unity. For Kohlberg, this experience is correlative to Erikson’s final
psychosocial task of integrating life’s meaning.28
A key aspect of postcritical faith development in Fowler’s theory
is the theme of paradox.29 Whereas Fowler identifies the power to
reflect critically on one’s self and one’s world as the characteristic
strength of Stage 4 faith, he focuses on ironic imagination as the
strength peculiar to Stage 5 Conjunctive Faith. If a person is faithful
to experience, the neat boundaries and clear distinctions of the crit¬
ical, conceptual knowing necessary for the self-certainty of Stage 4
will gradually but inevitably give way to a recovery of the deep,
imaginative symbolic life in Stage 5’s dialectical-dialogical knowing.
If Stage 4’s energies were directed toward a clear definition and
establishment of self-identity, Stage 5’s interests are aimed at the
reality beyond the boundaries of that self—both within and without.
There emerges at Stage 5, then, not only a radical openness to the
truth of others, but a parallel openness to the fuller truth of one’s
own being. Like Kohlberg’s Stage 6 principled moral orientation,
Fowler’s Stage 5 faith is rooted in the experience of irrevocable com¬
mitments and deeds, and, like Kohlberg’s “Stage 7,” it too knows the
sacrament of defeat. Again, like Kohlberg’s principled Stage 6,
Fowler’s Conjunctive Faith of Stage 5 has an apprehension of justice
as a universal principle—beyond the limits of class, nation, or reli¬
gion. But if Stage 5 faith has a transforming vision of reality, it is also
painfully aware of the limits of the existing untransformed world. It
is, in Merton’s phrase, caught in the Belly of a Paradox.
As distinct from affective conversion, religious conversion is speci¬
fied by Lonergan as “other-worldly falling in love,” as “being grasped
by ultimate concern,” as “total and permanent self-surrender.”
According to Lonergan, a person’s capacity and desire for self¬
transcendence meets joyful fulfillment when “religious conversion
transforms the existential subject into a subject in love, a subject held,
grasped, possessed, owned through a total and so an other-worldly
love.” Beyond all other human loving, “religious loving is without con¬
ditions, qualifications, reservations; it is with all one’s heart and all
one’s soul and all one’s mind and all one’s strength.”30 As such it is the
ultimate realization of a multidimensional process of self-transcen¬
dence, of moving beyond the self, of reaching out to others.
Religious conversion is not just a process of becoming "religious,”

but a totally radical reorientation of one’s entire life, of one’s very self.
One turns to God, not to religion, in such a conversion; one allows
God to move to the center of one’s life, to take over and direct it.
Indeed, both persons with, as well as those without, a religious per¬
spective are eligible candidates for a religious conversion in this radi¬
cal sense. For the former, such an ultimate conversion may be best
understood, perhaps, as a conversion from religion to God. When
religious conversion is seen from the traditional Christian per¬
spective of self-surrender, the relativization of human autonomy
is stressed. Properly understood, one surrenders not oneself or
one’s personal moral autonomy, but one’s deepest (though unad¬
mitted) pretense to absolute autonomy. But such total surrender
is rare, and possible only for those who have totally fallen in love
with a mysterious, uncomprehended God, for the person who has
been grasped by an other-worldly love and completely trans¬
formed into a being-in-love. Now one’s very being—indeed, all of
reality—is seen as gift.31
Did Merton experience religious conversion in this radical
sense? As personally authentic and life-transforming as Merton’s
1938-41 Christian conversion was, I have characterized it as essen¬
tially a conventional, uncritical moral conversion to the given,
unquestioned values and beliefs of the Catholic Church. 1 have also
suggested that by the end of the 1950s, Merton, through affective
and critical conversions, had developed an autonomous, principled
moral consciousness rooted in compassion. Significantly, however,
Merton understood this moral autonomy to be in no way
absolute.32 He emphasized that what we really seek and need-
”love, an authentic identity, a life that has meanmg-cannot be had
by merely willing and by taking steps to procure them.”33
At Polonnaruwa in Ceylon, during the 1968 Asian journey that
was to end in his death, Merton appears to have received this gift.
As he looked at the giant Buddhas, with “the silence of their extra¬
ordinary faces. The great smiles. Huge yet subtle. Filled with every
possibility, questioning nothing, knowing everything, rejecting
nothing,” he was “suddenly, almost forcibly, jerked clean out of the
habitual, half-tied vision of things, and an inner clearness, clarity,
as if exploding from the rocks themselves, became evident and
obvious. In this clarity, Merton realized, “everything is emptiness,
and everything is compassion.” He did not know when he had ever

had “such a sense of beauty and spiritual validity running together
in one aesthetic illumination.” He wrote: “1 don’t know what else
remains but I have now seen and pierced through the surface and
have got beyond the shadow and the disguise.”34
This description of the Polonnaruwa experience has significant
similarities with Merton’s understanding of the Zen breakthrough
experience of satori. For Merton, as Anne Carr points out, saton is
“an inner explosion, a ‘bursting open of the inner core of the spirit’
which ‘blasts the false self to pieces and leaves nothing’ but one’s
inmost or original self.”35 Satori is “a sudden, definitive, integral
realization of the nothingness of the exterior self and consequently,
the liberation of the real self, the inner ‘I’.”36 The real or true self is
the Zen no-self. But, in Zen terms, as Carr explains, the real self
“finally transcends the distinction between self and not-self.”37 Zen,
as Merton understands it, aims at a consciousness “beyond the
empirical, reflecting, willing and talking ego,” a consciousness
“immediately present to itself and not mediated by either concep¬
tual or reflexive or imaginative knowledge.”38
Zen practitioners may not be particularly interested in moving
beyond the pure consciousness of such spiritual experience, but for
Merton its special significance is as a “stepping-stone to an aware¬
ness of God.” Merton could not be more explicit: “If we enter into
ourselves, find our true self, and then pass ‘beyond’ the inner !,’ we
sail forth into the immense darkness in which we confront the ‘I AM’
of the Almighty.”39 Such transcendent experience is “an experience
of metaphysical or mystical self-transcending” as well as “an experi¬
ence of the ‘Transcendent’ or the ‘Absolute’ or ‘God’ not so much as
object but Subject.”40 For Christians there is an infinite gulf between
the being of God and the “I” of the inner self, and our awareness of
each must be distinguished. Yet, despite this metaphysical distinc¬
tion, says Merton, in spiritual experience, “paradoxically, our inmost
T exists in God and God dwells in it,” and in this identity of love
and freedom there “appears to be but one Self.”41 The true self is
indeed conscious, but it is aware of itself “as a self-to-be-dissolved in
self-giving, in love, in ‘letting-go,’ in ecstasy, in God....”42
In such transcendent experience, according to Merton, there is a
“radical and revolutionary change in the subject.” This radical
change in the subject is a “kenotic transformation, an emptying of
all the contents of the ego-consciousness to become a void in

which the light of God or the glory of God, the full radiation of the
infinite reality of His Being and Love are manifested.” Understood
in the Pauline sense of a participation in “the mind of Christ,” this
“dynamic of emptying and of transcendence accurately defines the
transformation of the Christian consciousness in Christ.”43
Although there are clear similarities between the kenotic self¬
emptying of Christianity and the Zen Buddhist experience of
emptiness, George Kilcourse has emphasized how Merton saw the
Christian theological orientation as affective and personal, and the
Zen ontological approach as intellectual and existential.44
This kenotic participation in “the mind of Christ” is the Chris¬
tian version of religious conversion, the orientation toward tran¬
scendent mystery that climaxes one’s radical desire for
self-transcendence. This culmination of the self-transcending
process is an orientation toward mystery because, although con¬
scious, it is not objectified. In mediating a return to immediacy, as
Lonergan expresses it, the contemplative subject has withdrawn
from objectification to a prayerful cloud of unknowing.45 Still,
though other-worldly, such radically religious experience must not
be understood in any isolated, individualistic sense. Merton was
clear on the this-worldly conditions for passage through the deep¬
est recesses of interiority into the world of the sacred: “A man can¬
not enter into the deepest center of himself and pass through that
center into God, unless he is able to pass entirely out of himself
and empty himself and give himself to other people in the purity of
a selfless love.”46
In his own life, the mature Merton’s commitment to others was
constitutive of his very person. Not only in the social arena of global
peace and justice, but also in the more personal dimension of life,
Merton was on intimate terms with a selfless love’s pain of frustration
and defeat. Despite this pain, however, his dynamic openness to real¬
ity would not be denied. In one direction the Catholic monk moved
out to the world of Protestant theology, to the secular world of the civil
rights and peace movements, and, of course, to the world of the East.
He was convinced that this movement toward the world in all its rich¬
ness, complexity, but also evil was a necessary condition for moving
beyond the self in another direction-toward the depths of the inner
self, the true person, and finally the reality of God. This inner move-
ment is a long, arduous journey, for which, Merton gradually learned,

one must travel light, jettisoning the nonessentials, if one is to survive
the rigors of the desert.
On this inner journey the illusions of absolute autonomy that
make the false self’s life comfortable become luxuries that make
the death of the true self certain. One clings to such autonomy at
the cost of authentic life, of the true self. This is the paradoxical
truth that is perceived only by what Fowler calls the ironic imagi¬
nation. There is no doubt that Merton the poet always had a spe¬
cial “feel” for the symbolic, but it was only when that “feel” was
freed to explore the darkness of the inner life that Merton came
face to face with paradox—not just the paradox of being a contem¬
plative monk with a Madison Avenue schedule, but the radical
paradox he discovered at the center of his being: only in losing
your self can you find your self.47 Not without reason does Merton
write so persuasively about the existential dread, the dark night
that accompanies the loss, the abandonment, indeed, the death of
the false self.48
For Merton, of course, to find the true self in the center of one’s
being is also to truly discover God—immediately, concretely, experi-
entially. Merton writes of the point vierge, “the virginal point of pure
nothingness,” where, “in apparent despair, one meets God—and is
found completely” at this “center of all other loves.”49 In Christian
terms this transcendent experience at the depths of one’s subjectiv¬
ity appears to condition the movement from Fowler’s paradoxical
Stage 5 Conjunctive Faith to Stage 6 Universalizing Faith. For the
rare person of Stage 6 faith, such transcendent experience grounds
the felt sense of ultimate environment that is inclusive of all being.
As mentioned above, Merton writes of a “final integration,” a state
of transcultural maturity, in which one is a fully comprehensive
self, with a universal, cosmic perspective, identified with everyone,
and thus a peacemaker. Such, for Merton, is holiness.
In promoting and supporting one’s active search for value, love,
and truth, spiritual direction prepares one for the graced discovery
of the true self and God at the center of one’s being. Each new dis¬
cernment of life as gift, each small movement toward surrender of
self-interest, readies one for such holiness, for the transcendent
experience of surrendering totally to absolute Gift. Such, ulti¬
mately is the goal of spiritual direction.
Conclusion
Christian conversion is the concrete form a person’s fundamen¬

tal reorientation to value, love, truth, and God takes when it is
shaped by the Christian story. I have distinguished moral, affective,
critical, and religious dimensions of Christian conversion at crucial
points of transition in the developmental pattern, and engaged
them in the explication of Merton’s life-long journey. In claiming a
normative character for this interpretation, I defined fully religious
Christian conversion as a specifically adult reality, while recogniz¬
ing the developmental possibility of a basic Christian moral conver¬
sion in the resolution of the youthful identity crisis. This
structural-developmental interpretation resists the conversion
claim based only on manifest content change—however emotion¬
ally charged or forcefully expressed it may be.
The personal measure of Christian living, therefore, is the
conscience that has experienced a Christian conversion at once
moral, affective, critical, and religious. Only a person thus con¬
verted is fully and concretely sensitive to the loving life of Jesus.
In Merton’s life we discovered again the fundamental gospel
truth that lies at the heart of the Christian tradition: the radical
religious conversion of Christian conscience finds its fullest real¬
ization in loving compassion-the self-transcending perfection
of human care and justice. In its total surrender such religious
conversion radically relativizes the moral autonomy of Christian
conscience.
In turning life and love upside down, however, religious con¬
version does not destroy the authentic moral autonomy of per¬
sonal responsibility. Indeed, the criterion of both religious
conversion and the development of personal autonomy is self¬
transcendence. Justice, generativity, and universalizing faith all
insist on mutuality as the norm of authentic autonomy. Only the
inauthentic notions of absolute autonomy and self-fulfillment
are contradicted by the self-transcending love and surrender of
religious conversion. Christian religious conversion is not the
antithesis but the completion of personal development toward
self-transcending autonomy.50 While all counseling and therapy
should have self-transcending autonomy as their goal, pastoral
counseling proceeds explicitly in the context of religious self-
transcendence, and spiritual direction aims at the fullness of

cognitive, affective, moral, and religious self-transcendence in
Christian conversion, at the radical transformation of the self.51
We will pursue this distinctiveness in the following chapter as we
focus again on Mary.
Chapter 8
Mary Revisited
PSYCHOLOGY, THEOLOGY, AND

PASTORAL STRATEGY
In Chapter 1 we saw two radically different interpretations of
Mary’s development and conversion. Fowler specified Mary’s
development and conversion in terms of Stage 3, Synthetic-
Conventional faith. Ford-Grabowsky, critical of Fowler’s approach
as ego-oriented, internally contradictory, and merely psychological,
interpreted Mary’s conversion experience in terms of the Jungian
self and the Pauline “inner person” or Christian self of Flildegard.
In Ford-Grabowsky’s view, Mary had two conversions, one from
ego to Jung’s self, and one from self to Htldegard’s Christian self. In
this view, Mary exemplified growth in authentic Christian faith, the
“inner person” alive in Christ, realities beyond the scope of
Fowler’s ego psychology, which can only reduce Mary’s experience
to a case of arrested development.
These two interpretations are rooted in radically different under¬
standings of the relationship between psychology and theology, or,
from another angle in traditional language, between nature and
grace. Ford-Grabowsky’s view assumes that nature and grace are
totally separate realms that have little or no interrelationship. Psy¬
chology and theology, therefore, deal with separate, unrelated reali¬
ties: psychology with the natural ego, theology with the graced
Christian self of faith. In contrast to this separatist view, Fowler’s
134
MARY REVISITED 135
interpretation assumes a more integratiomst view—that nature and

grace are intimately bound together, with grace working on and
within nature. In short, it assumes a graced nature. Psychology and
theology, therefore, are likewise intimately connected, working
together in an integrated way.
These two interpretations also lead to two very different pastoral
strategies. For Ford-Grabowsky, Mary’s faith and character exempli¬
fied the authentic Christian self. Tier life in Christ, therefore,
merely needed the normal, ongoing spiritual sustenance. Faith
appears to be understood as univocal, unrelated to and indepen¬
dent from psychological development. If Mary had need of coun¬
seling or even therapy, that was related to an ego problem, not to
the faith of her Christian self. For Fowler, of course, faith has many
faces, some of the most important ones being the six that are delin¬
eated as stages in his developmental theory. Faith may be divine,
but it is also human, and as such is intimately bound up with the
concreteness of the human person. As the old scholastic dictum
puts it, “Whatever you take, you mark with your self” (Quidquid
recipitur, recipitur secundum modum recipientis). To say that Mary’s
conversion occurred at faith Stage 3 means, for Fowler, that Mary’s
Christian faith, not just her ego, was still a good distance from
maturity. Pastoral care for Mary, therefore, required a strategy that
would help her to overcome the obstacles to her continuing devel¬
opment—the development, that is, of her whole, integrated self in
all its dimensions, cognitive, affective, moral, and faith.
In Fowler’s faith-development perspective, Mary needed sponsor-
ship-the appropriate “affirmation, encouragement, guidance and
models for [her] ongoing growth and development.” A sponsor or
sponsoring community provides trustworthy support and, when
necessary, even confrontation. Appropriate sponsorship for Mary
would have involved experiences of community worship and edu¬
cation as well as spiritual direction and psychotherapy. All of this
might have deepened and expanded the initial commitments of her
conversion experience, and “accelerated her movement to a new
and more individuated stage of faith.”1
Mary did receive sponsorship from the Christian communities
in which she lived after her conversion. But the sponsorship of
these communities assumed that Mary could simply erase the
experience of her personal history and start her new Christian life
“from scratch.” Fowler agrees that Mary needed a decisive break

from her preconversion life. But Mary’s painful experience after her
conversion indicates that preconversion images, habits, and attach¬
ments cannot simply be cut off and ignored. Images of the new
Christian master story need to be highlighted, but any attempt to
bury the preconversion past is to harbor an “internal saboteur." As
Fowler explains it, “The series of negations and separations in
Mary’s earlier life that left her with a strong substratum of mistrust
and self-doubt, on the one hand, and gave rise to her willful, stub¬
born insistence upon autonomy on the other could not simply be
obliterated and left behind.” Moreover, adds Fowler, “Mary’s intelli¬
gence and potential for critical reflection could not simply be sub¬
ordinated to authoritarian external control if there was to be the
possibility for constructive growth in her new faith.”2
Fowler suggests that Mary, after a period of separation from her
preconversion life, needed the kind of pastoral and therapeutic
care that would assist her in recapitulating earlier stages of develop¬
ment. “Through a skillful combination of therapy and the use of
forms of prayer and spiritual direction involving guided medita¬
tions, Mary might have been helped to rework images of God, self
and others formed in infancy and childhood in the light of her new
relation to Christ.”3
“Recapitulation” is Fowler’s structural-developmental version of
what ego psychologists call “regression in the service of the ego.”4 It
is a process of moving back from the point of something like a con¬
version experience in order to rework and reground the structural
strengths of earlier stages in light of one’s new center of value,
images of power, and decisive master story.5 While everyone who
experiences a conversion will need such spiritual regrounding, it is
clear that Mary also needed coordinated therapeutic reworking of
earlier stages, especially in terms of trust and autonomy.
The house church communities Mary lived in after her conver¬
sion had a very different understanding of how to support a new
convert. Rather than recapitulation and transformation, they
thought of negation and obliteration. For them, Mary’s new being in
Christ required a renunciation of her willful self, a separation from
everyone and everything in her past, including her past self, as
hopelessly fallen and sinful.6 Because of the pain in one’s preconver¬
sion life, this cancellation of the past can seem quite attractive to the
MARY REVISITED 137
convert. Interpreted in satanic terms, the past can be very frighten¬

ing; to acknowledge that this past continues to exist in the new self
is too threatening. It is much easier to believe that submission to
Christ has destroyed the evil powers of one’s past. But, in Fowler’s
view, as welcome as the obliteration of the past may be, this strategy
short-circuits the conversion process, and continues the pain.
The heart of the matter, as Fowler sees it, is this: “Mary’s conver¬
sion, genuine and powerful though it was, was seriously affected by
the failure of the communities in which she found fellowship to
sponsor her in the transformation, rather than the negation, of the
willful self.” And, as Fowler continues, we can hear the echo of
Robert Kegan: “There is a terrible kind of cruelty, no matter how
well intended, in demanding the denial of self when there is no self¬
hood to deny.” At best, Mary’s self was in pieces. To demand the
renunciation of her willfulness was to require her to deny one of the
few strengths she had, leaving her with a passive fragment of a self
dangerously dependent, as Fowler says, on external authority and
internal impulses. Without an integrated self, a new convert will
almost inevitably see in such authority and impulses the “workings
of the Lord.” It is sad, says Fowler, that Mary did not find a commu¬
nity that focused on Christ’s promise to bring life abundantly, a
community that could have supported her in the development of an
individuated identity, with Christ as the “decisive other.”7
In Fowler’s view, Mary’s conversion will not be completed until she
goes back and dwells again in the key stages of personal faith develop¬
ment—from infancy through later childhood—where trust can be
regrounded and primal images and stories reshaped. Such a process
of refounding faith and integrating identity would prepare Mary for
the intimacy and ministry she seeks. But intimacy and ministry,
writes Fowler, again echoing Kegan, “would then be ways of express¬
ing and sharing the personhood [self] Mary is, rather than being the
means by which she tried to find and confirm identity [self].”8
THE SELF: FOWLER AND FORD-GRABOWSKY

How can our consideration of the self in its development and
conversions help us to understand and overcome the major differ¬
ence between Fowler and Ford-Grabowsky in their interpretations
of Mary? First we should briefly review the understanding of the

self constructed in Chapter 3.
The main point to be emphasized is that the self is one—a com¬
plex unity, in tension to be sure, but a unity. We must not allow all
the references to many different “selves” to obscure this fundamen¬
tal point. We must also remind ourselves about the danger of reifi¬
cation—of making a “thing” of the self or of such other psychic
realities as, for example, the ego.
In my understanding, the self is one: a dynamic, developing,
dipolar, embodied reality constituted by two dialectically related
poles, subjective (“I”) and objective (“me”), and radically oriented
beyond itself to the other. William James and others have taught us
how complex and multidimensional the self-as-object is, but it is
always—to a greater or lesser degree—me. Although the self-as-
object realizes the complexity and diversity of the self, it is always
dialectically related to the self-as-subject, the unifying “I.” At the
same time, the self-as-subject, the “I,” is no pure, isolated “thing,”
but a dimension of the self and, through its dialectical relationship
to the self-as-object, is radically shaped and textured by the experi¬
ences of the self. The self is one. Though dipolar, the self is a unity.
In the context of this understanding of the self we can now con¬
sider the views of Fowler and Ford-Grabowsky.
As we saw in Chapter 1, Ford-Grabowsky borrows notions of the
self from Jung and from Hildegard of Bingen. She sets Jung’s self
and Hildegard’s Christian self off against what she calls Fowler’s
ego, which she conceives along Jungian lines: the conscious center
of the psychic structure. We will come to Fowler shortly, but we
should note here that Fowler does not explicate his understanding
of the self in Jungian terms and does not systematically character¬
ize it as “ego.”
Whatever the merit of Jung’s view of the self and of Hildegard’s
view of the Christian self, we should be clear that they are hypo¬
thetical concepts, not empirical realities.9 Neither Jung’s psycho¬
logical self nor Hildegard’s theological Christian self is
experienced; both are postulated. Moreover, whatever their individ¬
ual merits, serious questions arise when these two selves-the one
psychological, the other theological-are mixed together in one
conception of the person. Ford-Grabowsky characterizes ego, self,
and Christian self as “levels of personality; in fact, however, she
MARY REVISITED 139
often refers to them as if they are separate, even competing, enti¬

ties. These terms, indeed, are often used in a moral-religious rather
than a structural way. For example, Ford-Grabowsky writes about
“the difference between the ego-centered person and the God-
centered person.” Her point is that “When the ego dominates the
psyche, one’s horizons expand no further than personal concerns,
awareness of God being virtually impossible: one can not be con¬
scious of self and God simultaneously.” Such a statement makes
clear, I trust, how important was our reflection on consciousness
in Chapter 3, where we distinguished between consciousness (a
subject’s presence to itself) and intentionality (the presence of an
object to a subject). She continues: “When the self emerges, how¬
ever, dislodging the petty ego from its place of psychic centrality to
the periphery of the psyche, then egotism can begin to be over¬
come, and awareness of God become possible.”10
Ford-Grabowsky’s critique that Fowler mixes the logically incom¬
patible ego (Stages 1H) and self (Stages 5-6) into one developmen¬
tal sequence makes sense only if the ego and self are conceived as
two separate entities on different developmental tracks.11 The same
is true of Ford-Grabowsky’s deliberately impossible suggestion that
Fowler might add a seventh stage to accommodate his theory to the
Christian self. The idea of the logical impossibility of a person being
simultaneously at two or three stages, as Ford-Grabowsky charges
against Fowler, rests entirely on the conception of ego and selves as
multiple, separate entities. But this confusion is not found in
Fowler. It is Ford-Grabowsky who assigns her own view of ego to
Fowler. And it is she who imports the conception of self and Chris¬
tian self as separate from and in competition with the ego. These
Jungian and Hildegardian conceptions are foreign to Fowler, who
usually makes only general, unsystematic references to the self.
At the few points where Fowler does discuss the self explicitly, he
articulates a view compatible with the understanding of self pre¬
sented here in Chapter 3. Most recently, he has stated that by selfhood
he means “the evolving subjective experience of becoming and being
a person in relation.” For Fowler, we are “indelibly social selves.”
Only by emerging from the deep social experience of being in the
womb and entering a new kind of relatedness do we begin the jour¬
ney to selfhood. “Eventually, through maturation and continuing
interaction with others,” he explains, “we attain selfhood: we become

reflective selves-persons in relation.”12
Earlier, Fowler had explained that his theory of development
“presumes a self that is involved in a simultaneous process of cen¬
tering and de-centering.” This is a version of the dipolar develop¬
ment discussed in Chapter 6: in one interactional process there are
created an ever more fully realized personal self and an ever wider
and more complex world of the self. At the subject-pole, Fowler
sees “an increasingly individuating self—a self that as it develops,
differentiates itself from a nurturing ethos and gradually, stage by
stage, assumes the burden of construing and maintaining for the
self a vision of reality, and of taking autonomous moral responsibil¬
ity within it.” In other words, as Fowler understands it, “this
process describes an increasingly centered self—a self with bound¬
aries established by increasingly self-chosen, self-aware invest¬
ments of trust and loyalty.”13
At the same time as this centering is proceeding, there is at the
object-pole a “gradual decentering in the sense that at each stage a
more inclusive account is taken of persons, groups, experiences
and world views other than one’s own. Increasing with each stage,”
according to Fowler, “there is an effort to find and maintain a mutu¬
ality or complementarity with a widened cosmos of being and
value.”14 In short, as one becomes more oneself, one’s world
becomes larger and richer. Authentic subjectivity and genuine
objectivity are two sides of the same developmental coin. This sin¬
gle, experienced self—developing through a process of centering
and decentering-is Fowler’s faithing person, not Jung’s ego or self
nor Hildegard’s Christian self.
From the perspective of the self constructed in this study, neither
Fowler’s view of the self nor Ford-Grabowsky’s is adequate. Ford-
Grabowsky’s separatist approach and her reliance on Jung and
Hildegard result in an understanding of self that is hypothetical
and multiple rather than experiential and single. Though com¬
mendable for its attempt to take the Christian spiritual life seri¬
ously, this view ends up with a separate Christian self that is merely
added on to the Jungian understanding of ego and self.
Fowler’s understanding is preferable insofar as it is at least
implicitly single and experiential, but it is for the most part simply
a taken-for-granted common-sense understanding that deals with
MARY REVISITED 141
none of the theoretical issues of the self, such as consciousness, for

example, in any explicit way. And, as we have just seen, when
Fowler does consider the self explicitly, his common-sense lan¬
guage of simultaneous centering and decentering turns a paradox¬
ical reality of the self into a literal contradiction. So, while the major
thrust of Fowler’s view of the self is basically compatible with this
study’s understanding, his self is left too much as a merely back¬
ground “given” to be truly useful. The valid concerns of both Ford-
Grabowsky and Fowler, I suggest, are dealt with in a much more
satisfactory manner by this study’s explicit, integrated view of the
dialectical, desiring self that is realized in its very interaction with
the other: persons, world, God.
MARY: DEVELOPMENT AND CONVERSION

The understanding of the self we constructed in Chapter 3, and
have just reviewed above, is, of course, a developmental understand¬
ing, as explicated in Chapter 6. The dialectic of subject-pole and
object-pole that is constitutive of the self works itself out historically
in the interactional lives of concrete persons. No two selves, there¬
fore, are the same; but there are, as we have seen, broad patterns of
similarity that developmental psychologists have traced through vari¬
ous dimensions of the self—from the initial differentiation of subject-
pole and object-pole in infancy through their increasing dialectical
complexity in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.
As a developmental theorist influenced by the Piagetian cogni¬
tive-structuralist approach, as well as by Eriksonian psychosocial
concerns, Fowler has a mostly implicit understanding of the self
that is, of course, radically developmental. As we saw in the previous
section, he “presumes” a self in the process of centering and decen¬
tering. From that perspective, the present study is an attempt to con¬
struct the developmental theory of self that Fowler presumes.
Fowler’s interpretation of Mary therefore is, as we have seen, a
fundamentally developmental interpretation. For the reasons speci¬
fied in Chapter 1, Fowler saw Mary in terms of Stage 3 Synthetic-
Conventional faith, struggling to achieve a positive identity. From
Fowler’s perspective, faithing is a constitutive dimension of the self;
it contributes to making the self what it is. Distinct but not separate,
faith and self develop hand in hand. In other words, for Fowler, the
single faithing self is the subject of change, of development.
Through all the stages of faith and ages of the psychosocial life
cycle, there is a single, dynamic self that develops. Now at Stage 3,
now at Stage 4, now struggling primarily with identity issues, now
with intimacy, but always the one self, the same but different; that is
the nature of change. Change requires a subject that changes; devel¬
opment requires a self that develops. Mary is Mary. The college
dropout who hit rock bottom is the same Mary who listened to
records in her bedroom as a little girl, but different.
Fowler’s theory of faith development, Erikson’s psychosocial life
cycle, and the other developmental theories attempt to explain the
dynamics of the change that makes the difference. Much of same¬
ness and difference can be known by the external observer; one
can say something like: “She’s changed a lot, but she’s the same
Mary I knew ten years ago.” But when we are discussing change in
the self, the focus is primarily on the first person singular. In one of
her interviews, Mary could tell Fowler about herself as an early
adolescent: “I just couldn’t seem to find any friends who had simi¬
lar interests to mine, and I became really withdrawn, and my
mother really got onto me about that because she wanted me to be
outgoing and have a lively social life and everything, for my own
sake. I just couldn’t be the way she wanted me to be. I got very
withdrawn, and I read. I’d just close myself in my room and read or
listen to classical music.”15 Clearly, Fowler not only takes change
seriously, but is able to provide an explanatory context for it.
In Chapter 1 we saw Fowler’s specification of his reasons for
locating Mary at Stage 3 of faith development. Across the range of
Fowler’s analytic categories-Locus of Authority, Form of World
Coherence, Bounds of Social Awareness, Symbolic Function, Form
of Logic, Perspective Taking, and Moral Judgment-a consistent
pattern of faith appeared: a pattern characterized essentially by an
uncritical interpersonal dependence. I find Fowler’s analysis of
Mary’s development thoroughly persuasive. Rather than rehearse it
again here, I intend to complement it by considering Mary in light
of Kegan’s developmental model of the self.
As we saw in Chapter 6, Kegan’s understanding of the self
unfolds in five stages: Impulsive, Imperial, Interpersonal, Institu¬
tional, and Interindividual. Although the self that moves through
MARY REVISITED 143
the stages is more important than the stages themselves, it can be

instructive to examine a person in terms of a particular stage’s
characteristics. Following upon the concrete limitations of the
Impulsive and Imperial selves of childhood, the cognitive transfor¬
mation of adolescence makes possible the mutual and empathic
Interpersonal self, characterized by shared feelings. The fact that
the cognitive transformation of interpersonal relations makes the
Interpersonal self first possible in adolescence does not mean that
it is strictly an adolescent reality. The Interpersonal self is, in fact,
lived and experienced by many adults, younger and older. That
Mary as a young adult is at the Interpersonal stage is not excep¬
tional. That her struggle, influenced by a context of cultural rebel¬
lion and highlighted by a conversion experience, is so intensely
painful, perhaps is exceptional.
Mary’s great need of others is clearly demonstrated in her des¬
perate searching for a community and a husband. She needs them
to be a self. To a great degree, Mary is her interpersonal relations.
When she loses them, she loses her self. How can a person lose her
self? Such an idea only makes sense when we recall Lonergan’s dis¬
tinction between the self-as-subject and the self-as-object, and
James’ understanding of the various dimensions of the “me” or self-
as-object. Destruction of the self-as-object can be experienced by
the self-as-subject. Listen again to James reflecting on the “social
me.” For the person who falls in love, says James, the social self is
susceptible to the heights of elation and the depths of dejection.
“To his own consciousness he is not, so long as this particular
social self fails to get recognition....”16 Self is a reality of conscious¬
ness. As realities of consciousness, the most important thing about
the self’s relationships is what they fed like, and the loss of a signif¬
icant relationship feels like death. To transpose a famous line, a per¬
son may die only once, but a self can die a thousand times!
Mary’s Interpersonal self dies, is not, each time her interper¬
sonal relations cease to exist. Mary first risked and lost a good
community experience over her obsession with the man she felt
God meant her to marry. Following that loss, Mary next drifted
away from involvement in another community and its ministry
when she threw herself into a relationship—and quickly marriage-
with Harry. After that extremely painful experience, and despite
her ability to finally let go of Harry, Mary was soon in pursuit again
of her earlier unrequited love. Although a good Christian commu¬

nity was important to Mary, it is clear that she gave priority to an
individual relationship with a man. This is what she felt God meant
for her. But the desperation and pain of this search suggests that
Mary was really searching for her self in her relationships. In terms
of Kegan’s distinction between Stage 3 fusion and Stage 5 intimacy,
Mary was incapable of intimacy because she had no independent
self to bring to her relationships. As important as relationships
were to Mary, they were the relationships of one whose very self is
constituted by the relationship. Mary was her self only in her rela¬
tionships, only in fusion with another. She was not a strong, inde¬
pendent self capable of transcending and organizing her
relationships. She did not have relationships, she was her relation¬
ships. Her self existed in and thus was subject to her relationships.
If Mary’s post-conversion loss of relationships resulted in some¬
thing less than the suicidal nothingness she had experienced ear¬
lier, it was likely because she had the Lord to support her. Though
her relationship to the Lord was just as fused as her relationships
with the other men in her life, the Lord, unlike the others, was
always faithful: “The Lord never forsook me, he was really faithful to
me.” Ford-Grabowsky is correct in emphasizing Mary’s Christian
faith, and how it changed her life. But Fowler is also correct in
characterizing this faith in terms of Stage 3’s uncritical multidi¬
mensional symbols. No matter where the Lord led her, and no mat¬
ter what the results, the Lord was always faithful. With Kegan, we
can understand how this had to be, how Mary’s relationship with
the Lord, the fusion of her Interpersonal self with her images of the
Lord, could be nothing other than uncritical. Ford-Grabowsky
assumes that Mary’s relationship to the Lord can transcend her
human relational capacities, that grace can overcome developmen¬
tal limitations. So she sees in Mary’s faith only strength. Fowler
assumes that Mary’s faith, her relationship to the Lord, is rooted in
her developmental possibilities, and has all the strengths and limi¬
tations of her present capacities. If we understand grace as working
within and not above nature, we too may appreciate, through the
perspective of Fowler, Kegan, and the other developmentalists, the
power of Mary’s faith in the Lord, but also its necessary develop¬
mental limitations and its need for continued expansion. Mary-
not her ego, not her Jungian self, not her Christian self, but Mary
MARY REVISITED 145
herself—must continue to develop, through the realization of inde¬

pendent identity, toward the fuller dimensions of faith, toward the
greater possibilities of genuine intimacy in all her relationships,
including her relationship with the Lord.
Of course, for Fowler, as we have seen, Mary’s possibilities for
development are linked to a process of recapitulation. And the
above reference to identity and intimacy suggests that we might
consider, with Fowler, some of the elements of this process through
Erikson’s psychosocial developmental lens.
We may begin with Mary’s statement, referring to her mother,
that “right from the first there was antagonism between us.” Given
her mother’s serious unhappiness during Mary’s first years when
the foundations of trust are laid, and despite Mary’s protestation
that “1 know she really wanted me,” we may suspect that Mary
emerged from infancy with more than her share of mistrust. After
that bad start, it is not surprising to hear Mary say: “I guess 1 gave
up [on trying to please my mother] at a really early age and just
became a really rebellious brat towards my parents.”17 In Erikson’s
second period, of autonomy vs. shame and doubt, therefore, there
may have begun the shameless willfulness and stubborn assertive¬
ness that plagued Mary for the next two decades.
Family relations did not improve much as Mary moved into Erik¬
son’s third crisis of initiative vs. guilt: “I remember that I was suici¬
dal from a very early age, and it was always a reaction to my
relationship with my mother.” This was the emotional baggage
Mary brought to elementary school. Her intelligence was recog¬
nized, but Fowler got the picture of a lonely girl, burdened with
anxiety, shame, and guilt. Mary developed a wonderful friendship
with another girl during their preadolescent years, but that ended
in abandonment: “I had a really close friend in fifth and sixth
grade, and she and I were just inseparable. She became the most
popular girl in junior high, and I sort of fell by the wayside. And
that really hurt a lot.”18 And nothing improved at home. By the
ninth grade Mary found a group of friends and was doing better,
but then her family moved from New York to Birmingham, and she
never really recovered from the culture shock of the move to the
South. She just could not find a satisfying social life.
Despite changing high schools each year, Mary did well enough in
her studies, and she went off to begin college after her junior year.
Although at the time it seemed like a good solution to a bad situation,

Mary really was not ready for another major change, let alone for col¬
lege campus life in the sixties: “I was maybe intellectually ready, but
not socially or emotionally ready for that change at all. It turned out to
be a really devastating experience too.” Reflecting on Erikson’s crisis
of identity, Fowler found little in Mary’s high school years that would
have contributed to a “clear, integrated and positive image of herself”
and much that would have confirmed the “undercurrent of negative
self-worth” and anger she brought from childhood.19
In college, all of this was heightened as Mary acted out a negative
identity in counterdependent rebelliousness, but all the while also
searching for truth and love, for something or someone, as Erikson
would say, worthy of committing herself to in fidelity. Too often,
however, this searching fidelity was exploited and betrayed, and
Mary finally hit rock bottom.
After her suicide attempt, Mary experienced what Fowler, while
acknowledging its communal limitations, calls a genuine conver¬
sion. Mary’s “previously scattered and ambiguous vectors of
fidelity,” he says, “found a focus in Jesus Christ.” She was promised
that her negative identity and life patterns could be negated, oblit¬
erated. So Mary “embarked upon the promise of a new way of life,
one in which she could submit her will to the will of the Lord.”
Unfortunately, from Fowler’s faith development perspective, during
the next five years in several house churches, “Mary seems not to
have grown either in the structuring of her faith or in the strength
of her identity....”20
To return to the viewpoint of Kegan’s self development, we may
suggest that as genuine as Mary’s conversion experience was, it
consisted essentially in an uncritical commitment of fidelity to
Jesus Christ, and left Mary’s sense of self entirely dependent on
this relationship to the Lord as mediated through the various com¬
munities she became involved in. In other words, at the object-pole
of fidelity Mary made a genuine commitment in her conversion,
but at the subject-pole of self and identity, she remained at Stage 3,
fused in relationships of dependence, not genuine intimacy, with
no independent identity. Now that we have traced elements of
Mary’s psychosocial development to the point of her conversion,
we must review and expand upon the meaning of conversion itself
in some detail.
MARY REVISITED 147
At the end of Chapter 2, 1 introduced, and in Chapter 7 devel¬

oped, an understanding of Christian conversion as fourfold: moral,
affective, cognitive, and religious. Now, with the goal of clarifying
the reality of Mary’s conversion, I will relate that four-dimensional
understanding to the meanings of conversion presented by Fowler
and Ford-Grabowsky.
As we have seen, Fowler is quite explicit in affirming the gen¬
uineness of Mary’s conversion. He is also explicit about his under¬
standing of conversion. Having distinguished between structure
and content in faith, Fowler asserts that “Conversion has to do with
changes in the contents of faith.”21 Stage change, on the other hand,
is structural. Conversion, he writes, is “a significant recentering of
one’s previous conscious or unconscious images of value and
power, and the conscious adoption of a new set of master stories in
the commitment to reshape one’s life in a new community of inter¬
pretation and action.”22 By contents of faith, then, Fowler means
centers of value, images of power, and master stories. Conversion,
or radical change in these contents, can have several different rela¬
tionships to structural stages of faith. It can take place in any of the
stages, or in the transitions between them. It can lead to structural
change or result from it. Theoretically, Fowler suggests six possible
relationships between conversion and faith stage change: 1) stage
change without conversion, 2) conversion without stage change, 3)
conversion that precipitates stage change, 4) stage change that pre¬
cipitates conversion, 5) conversion that is correlated with stage
change, and 6) conversion that blocks stage change.23
Within these possibilities, Fowler identifies Mary’s key religious
experiences as a conversion without stage change. In other words,
though Mary underwent no structural change, she did experience
a “life-changing shift” in the contents of her faith: “...she gave up
her old centers of value, admitted the impoverishment of the
images of power on which she had relied and made a self-
conscious decision to undertake the reshaping of her life in accor¬
dance with a new master story.”24
We have already discussed Fowler’s point that Mary, after her
conversion, needed a community’s support in a recapitulative
process that would transform her developmental strengths. Given
this kind of recapitulative process, Fowler suggests that Mary’s
“conversion would result in a re-grounding of [the strengths of each
stage] and their reorientation in light of faith’s new center of value,

images of power and decisive master-story.” This, in Fowler’s view,
would provide a new, more integrated foundation for a decisive
move to the next stage. [I]f truly Spirit empowered and thor¬
ough,” says Fowler, a post-conversion recapitulative experience
should free Mary to make “significant movement toward an Indi-
viduative-Reflective appropriation of her Christian faith.”25 With
such a process, in other words, conversion understood as content
change leads, in Fowler’s estimation, to structural stage change.
In contrast to Fowler’s interpretation, we have seen that Ford-
Grabowsky discerns in Mary’s experience not one but two conver¬
sions. Mary’s first conversion, according to Ford-Grabowsky, was
from ego to self. Resulting from her spiritual experience while tak¬
ing LSD, it transformed her into a believer, with religious faith in a
monistic God. After several months of a gnostic search for perfect
knowledge of the God within, Mary encountered the triune God in
2 Timothy 3:1-7, and in this second conversion herjungian self
was transformed into Hildegard’s Christian self. In characterizing
Mary’s first conversion as a transition from ego to self, Ford-
Grabowsky seems to identify this experience with Jung’s process of
individuation, the process of integrating the whole psyche that usu¬
ally takes the best part of a person’s life. Although the nature of
Mary’s second conversion as a transition from the Jungian self to
the Christian self is even more difficult to specify, it does seem clear
that Ford-Grabowsky means to distinguish ego/self/Christian self
more in moral-religious qualitative terms than in structural terms.26
Though ego, self, and Christian self appear to be structural reali¬
ties, the transitions from ego to self and from self to Christian self
are spelled out in terms of content change.
The experience that Ford-Grabowsky specifies as two separate
conversions, Fowler brings together as one conversion, though he
would probably recognize two “moments” in the total conversion
experience. In any case, both Fowler and Ford-Grabowsky, though
in very different ways, conceptualize conversion in terms of content
change rather than structural change.
In contrast to Fowler’s and Ford-Grabowsky’s interpretations of
conversion as content change, my understanding of conversion
focuses rather on structural stage change. I appreciate, of course,
the meaning of conversion as content change, and acknowledge
MARY REVISITED 149
the value of Fowler’s interpretation. Indeed, I distinguish between

horizontal and vertical conversions precisely in order to recognize
both content change and structural change as genuine conver¬
sions.27 Florizontal conversions (of content) occur within estab¬
lished horizons; vertical conversions (of structure) create new
horizons. If a person’s fundamental horizon is defined by a set of
existential questions, a change of content or horizontal conversion
would be a matter of new answers (content) to old questions
within an established horizon. A vertical conversion consists of rad¬
ically new questions creatively restructuring content (old or new)
into a totally new horizon.
While 1 recognize both types of conversion as genuine and
important, 1 focus on the vertical conversion of structural stage
change for several reasons: for example, 1) conversion as content
change has received thorough and almost exclusive attention from
analysts such as Fowler; 2) conversion as structural change can be
involved not only in shifts to new master stories, images, and val¬
ues, but also—and especially—in transformations within the master
story a person already has, within, for example, the existing faith of
a Christian; and 3) conversion as structural change is necessary in
order to realize the radical possibilities and most profound dimen¬
sions of religious faith—in this case, of Christian faith.28
As we have seen, a person like Mary may experience a conver¬
sion to Christian faith in the sense of a commitment to a new mas¬
ter story, images, and values, while remaining at the same structural
stage as before the conversion. In such an instance, the person will
appropriate the story, images, and values from her or his existing
stage or structural orientation, in Mary’s case, Stage 3 in terms of
both faith and self development. Our earlier examination of con¬
version in Merton’s life indicated, however, that the fullness of
Christian faith demands radical conversions in the affective, cogni¬
tive, moral, and faith dimensions that constitute the highest level of
structural development in each of these dimensions, as well as in
the whole self. In other words, by its very nature, the content of
Christian faith requires radical structural conversion.
Now, what interpretation of Mary’s conversion does the struc¬
tural understanding of conversion offer? We will look at each
dimension of full Christian conversion individually, but we might
begin by noting generally that Mary, like Merton, is a fine candidate
for this kind of analysis because her conversion experience fol¬

lowed directly upon a serious personal breakdown, a prerequisite
for major stage change.
First, what can we say about Mary in terms of cognitive conver¬
sion? On the evidence of her success in school as well as her articu¬
late interview, it is clear that she is very intelligent. Developmentally,
she obviously has attained a degree of formal operational ability.
When we meet Mary in Fowler’s interview, she is capable of making
some fairly sophisticated and astute observations about various per¬
sons, events, and situations in her life, but her perspective-taking is
essentially interpersonal, and usually without taking the standpoint
of the other. This limitation also means that Mary had no third-
person perspective for evaluating her relationships with others. In
short, Mary is very intelligent, with formal operations strong
enough to create interpersonal problems for herself, but not power¬
ful enough to deal with them in a satisfactory way.
Without significant development in formal operations, Mary is
incapable of reflecting on herself and, in particular, on her own
cognitive power in the critical way that is essential to cognitive con¬
version. Only through such critical reflection could Mary discover
the criterion of truth and value in herself, in the normative pattern
of her drive for self-transcendence, not in some external authority.29
Thus Mary’s faith and conversion, as genuine as they are, remain
uncritical, and they are likely to remain so without something of
the kind of recapitulative care Fowler recommends. We shall now
see that all this it true, too, of Mary’s moral conversion.
While it is clear that Mary has not experienced cognitive conver¬
sion, it is just as clear that she has experienced basic moral conver-
sion-that her conversion, though uncritical, is to basic Christian
values. Despite her continuing difficulties, Mary has opted for Chris¬
tian value as her criterion for decisions: “I put down my pride and
made a decision that I was going to believe in Jesus Christ and follow
him.”30 Mary’s effort to find and follow God’s will is a persistent
theme throughout her interview.31 We have already seen in Chapter 1
how Ford-Grabowsky detects in Mary’s post-conversion life the two
factors Hildegard associates with the Christian self: Christian faith
and Christian character.32 Ford-Grabowsky reminds us that not even
the most bitter suffering could shake Mary’s strong faith. And Ford-
Grabowsky highlights many of the Christian virtues Mary imitated:
MARY REVISITED 151
love, forgiveness, fortitude, and—in keeping with the uncritical

nature of her conversion—obedience. Mary has structurally commit¬
ted herself to value, and, in content, specifically to the values and
images of the Christian story in the person of Jesus Christ.
Lacking cognitive conversion, Mary’s moral conversion, though a
genuine commitment to value, is not what I named in Chapter 7 a crit¬
ical moral conversion. In terms of Kohlberg’s developmental schema,
it has all the earmarks of Level II conventional morality—a conversion
to conventional Christian values. And it seems to be precisely the
uncritical nature of her Stage 3, interpersonal moral conversion that
accounts for most of Mary’s post-conversion difficulties—her depen¬
dence on external authority because she has not found authority in
her own self-transcending judgments, because she has not discovered
herself as the author of her life’s moral script.
Since the affective dimension of Mary’s life is, at best, at least as
complicated as most people’s, our analysis of it and of the possibil¬
ity of affective conversion must be complex. My reflections will be
from the developmental perspectives of Erikson and Kegan.
Although all of Erikson’s psychosocial tasks involve the affective
dimension in various important ways, I have identified the young
adult task or crisis of intimacy as central to affective conversion.
Here the young adult who has established a sense of identity now
risks that identity by offering to share his or her self in mutuality
with another. As we have seen, Mary wants to share her self, but has
no consolidated, independent sense of identity to bring to a truly
mutual relationship. Rather, she is trying to find herself in relation¬
ships and, as we noted from Kegan’s perspective, has experienced,
even after her conversion, the difficulties associated with depen¬
dent relationships of fusion. In sum, affectively, Mary has great
desire for intimacy, but her possibility of realizing that desire is lim¬
ited by the nature of her self and the quality of her pattern of relat¬
ing. This is just as true of Mary’s relationship with God as it is of
her relationship with other persons. Short of therapy, only some¬
thing like Fowler’s recapitulation process is likely to help Mary
gain the strength of independent identity necessary for the chal¬
lenge of true intimacy—and affective conversion. Then her desire to
give of her self will be liberated from the bonds of self-interest
needs, and the fundamental thrust of her Christian moral conver¬
sion will be realized with significant consistency.
As I specified with Lonergan in the previous chapter, religious

conversion is “other-worldly falling in love.” For Christians who
understand God as love itself, religious conversion in this sense is
falling in love with love. These words may have the aroma of foolish
romanticism, but radical Christian belief overturns the conventional
wisdom of the old popular song. Rather than “falling for make-
believe,” Christian understanding of God affirms that falling in love
with love is falling for truth itself. Falling in love with God is falling
in love with both love and truth. Religious conversion is giving one’s
life over without reservation to the desire to love and the search for
truth, to the hunger for goodness and the thirst for justice.
We have seen how religious conversion in this sense is adum¬
brated in the developmental perspective by the highest stages of
Kohlberg (7) and Fowler (6), and how this fullness of development
is optimally a response to Enkson’s crisis of integrity in one’s
mature years. Although it seems clear that Mary loves God and
wants to do God’s will by following Jesus, it is equally clear that
Mary’s development is consistently at Stage 3 across the board, far
short of the developmental conditions for the possibility of reli¬
gious conversion in the full, radical sense.
We can also approach this point from the angle of autonomy and
surrender. From this perspective, religious conversion can be
understood as the total surrender of the claim to absolute auton¬
omy. Personal autonomy is affirmed, but relativized. To cite another
homely scholastic dictum, “You can’t give what you don't have”
(Nemo dat quod non habet). Just as affective conversion requires
independent identity in order to give one’s self to others, religious
conversion requires personal autonomy in order to surrender one’s
self fully to God in love. As God’s grace continues to be communi¬
cated through personal relationships, one day Mary may attain the
personal autonomy necessary to surrender her self completely to
God. Until then, Mary, like most of us, tries her best to let God lead
her to such autonomy and surrender.
Appendix:
Self-Transcendence in Counseling
This appendix will relate self-transcendence to two widely

known and successful presentations in counselor education: the
three-stage model proposed by Gerard Egan1 and the various thera¬
peutic approaches summarized by Gerald Corey.2
From what has been said about self-transcendence in this study,
my option for a humanistic, existential, person-centered orienta¬
tion to counseling is probably clear. While all of the characteristics
Corey specifies for this orientation may not fit, their central thrust
is expressed in the concept of the desire for self-transcendence.
Briefly summarized from Corey, this central thrust includes (1) the
capacity for self-awareness, (2) freedom and responsibility, (3)
commitment, (4) choice, (5) discovering one’s identity and mean¬
ingfully relating to others, (6) the search for meaning, values, pur¬
pose, and goals, (7) respect of the person, (8) actualization of the
inborn urge to become an authentic person, (9) painful struggle of
the continuous growth toward the maturity of inner-directedness
and relational autonomy, and (10) self-creation.
From the perspective of the earlier delineation of the desire for
self-transcendence in terms of questions and responding activities,
four levels of the self-transcending person may be specified: (1)
experiential, (2) intelligent, (3) rational, and (4) responsible or
existential (see Figure 2, left column, reading from bottom up; this
chart correlates levels of Fonergan’s view of self-transcendence
with associated stages in Egan’s counseling model, which are then
correlated with task-appropriate therapeutic approaches). Whereas
153
the focus of the first three levels is cognitive, the fourth or highest
level focuses on all those other dimensions of the person called
existential: value, freedom, responsibility, decision, choice, commit¬
ment, fidelity, love, self-creation.
For all the reasons given by Carl Rogers and other humanistic
therapists, as well as for personal philosophical and theological
convictions, the view presented here shares the person-centered
approach’s fundamental respect for the person as a basic value in
counseling. That is the foundation of everything done with a client.
Given this humanistic, existential, person-centered orientation of
counseling for self-transcendence, let us now shift to Egan’s three-
stage model and discuss its various phases in terms of the four lev¬
els of the self-transcending person and in terms of several different
approaches to counseling and therapy. What will be outlined here,
then, is an eclectic approach to counseling, but not a spineless
eclecticism that desperately grabs a little of this and a little of that
because it has no clear direction. Rather, it is an eclecticism that
has the desire for self-transcendence as its backbone and the best
aspects of many approaches for its flesh and blood. This is a coun¬
seling approach that knows where it is going. However, realizing
that the multidimensional person exists on many different levels, it
recognizes that it too must be multidimensional. Therefore, it is a
multistage process that utilizes helpful aspects of many therapeutic
perspectives, depending on their ability to promote development
and self-transcendence. Notice that in this approach the client’s
self-transcendence is not only the goal of counseling and criterion
of authentic development, but that self-transcendence also defines
the very direction and stages of the counseling process itself.
The first phase activities of Egan’s Stage 1-Attending and Listen¬
ing-are clearly Rogerian preconditions for any effective therapeutic
relationship. They also relate directly to the first level of the desire
for self-transcendence. Here the basic precept is: Be attentive to your
experience. Obviously, self-transcendence is as important to the
counselor as it is to the client. Therefore, here the counselor is lis¬
tening and trying to attend to the client’s experience (verbal and
nonverbal) as closely as possible in order to help the client do the
same for himself or herself. For some clients, and some problems,
APPENDIX 155
SELF-TRANSCENDENCE THREE-STAGE MODEL THERAPEUTIC

APPROACHES
Lonergan Egan Corey
EXISTENTIAL-RESPONSIBLE REALITY
Evaluation
Deciding to Act Implementation BEHAVIOR
Value, Love b) Second Prase
Sequencing—i
Choosing —Programs
RATIONAL Identifying —*
a) First Phase BEHAVIOR
Judging 3. ACTION
Truth
Realistic Goals
General Statement of Aim
Declaration of Intent
b) Second Phase
Immediacy
Self-Sharing GESTALT
Advanced Empathy TRANSACTIONAL
Information Giving ANALYSIS
INTELLIGENT Summarizing
a) First Phase COGNITIVE
Understanding 2. DEVELOPING NEW RATIONAL-EMOTIVE
Meaning PERSPECTIVES AND
SETTING GOALS
Accurate Empathy
b) Second Phase PSYCHOANALYTIC
EXPERIENTIAL
Attending and Listening
a) First Phase CLIENT-CENTERED
Attending 1. PROBLEM EXPLORATION
Data AND CLARIFICATION
FIGURE 2
Relationships Among Self-Transcendence, Three-Stage Model,
and Therapeutic Approaches
psychoanalytic techniques such as free association may be useful

(even necessary) to help the client attend to certain kinds of
experience.
Of course, as counselors, we do not just listen and attend to the
client’s experience. We follow the desire for self-transcendence to
the second level of intelligence, trying to understand that experi¬
ence and trying to help the client understand it (primary empathy
and clarification). Now, in Egan’s model, all this is done as building
blocks for later stages of the counseling process, but even this Stage
1 activity has its own therapeutic value for the client.
The desire for self-transcending understanding is extended as
we move into Egan’s Stage 2. Efere the aim is for the client to
develop a new, more objective perspective with a dynamic under¬
standing aimed at goal-oriented action. This new perspective and
understanding is the purpose of all the counselor’s challenging
activities at this stage: summarizing, information-giving, advanced
empathy, self-sharing, immediacy. Specific techniques of many dif¬
ferent approaches may be appropriate to facilitate understanding at
this stage. Rational-Emotive Therapy is perhaps the most obvious
of the approaches useful for transforming a client’s perspective and
bringing about dynamic understanding. It is difficult to imagine a
technique more explicitly aimed at effecting a new perspective and
understanding than that of disputing irrational beliefs. Likewise,
the Cognitive Therapy of Beck and others zeroes in on distorted
and unrealistic thinking and tries to restructure thought patterns
through alternative interpretations in order to reshape one’s emo¬
tions and reorganize one’s behavior. Transactional Analysis is
another obvious candidate for implementation at this stage of goal-
directed self-understanding. Rescripting life scripts is perhaps the
clearest example we have of the interest of Transactional Analysis in
transforming cognitive-emotional perspectives through insight.
Although the Gestalt approach tends to deemphasize cognitive fac¬
tors (at least those of the explicit, conceptual sort favored by RET),
its interest in the expansion of awareness is an acknowledgment
that a certain kind of nonconceptual understanding is necessary
for personality change. For example, the top dog/underdog split
with an empty chair is one of many techniques Gestalt employs
toward the goal of expanding awareness and understanding of con¬
flict and polarities.
APPENDIX 157
All the ways Stage 2 challenges toward dynamic self-understanding

in its first phase are for the sake of setting clear, concrete goals in its
second phase. This second phase—moving from understanding,
through declaration of intent and general statement of aim, to realistic
goals—may be correlated with the third level of the self-transcending
person, the rational level of judging. For the final purpose of Stage 2 is
the translation of new understanding into a goal that client and coun¬
selor judge realistic.3
In Egan’s Stage 3, Action, there are five key tasks related to pro¬
gramming goals for action. The first phase of this stage—identify¬
ing, choosing, and sequencing programs (practical ways of
achieving goals)-continues to emphasize the cognitive levels of
understanding and judging. Divergent thinking, brainstorming,
and other means of identifying program possibilities are all exer¬
cises of creative understanding, of going beyond the given through
the power of imagination and insight. Selecting one program from
among the many possibilities requires a process of evaluation (with
explicit criteria) leading to the judgment that this is the best (that
is, most realistic, and so on) program for this person in this situa¬
tion. Finally, the fine-tuning of a program (distinguishing subpro¬
grams/goals and relating them all to each other and to the main
goal and program) is also a cognitive matter of understanding and
judgment. Behavior Therapy has led the way in developing sophis¬
ticated methods for programming goals. It has also been a leader in
the area of effective program implementation, a key task in the sec¬
ond phase of Stage 3.
Implementation and evaluation of programs are the final steps
in Egan’s model. Although behavioral techniques (reinforcement,
assertiveness training, contracts, and so forth) can be very helpful
at the implementation stage, attention here will be on the contribu¬
tion of Reality Therapy, because the focus shifts at this stage from
the self-transcending person’s levels of knowing to the level of
deciding to act. Here the client must assume the responsibility ol
putting his or her new perspective, goal, and program into action.
The client can and should be supported through this risky busi¬
ness in many ways, but finally it is the client’s personal decision to
move into concrete action that counts; no technique or no other
person can do this for her or him. No other approach is quite as
strong as Reality Therapy on this fundamental issue of personal
responsibility. Glasser focuses explicitly on the central issues of

what Lonergan names the fourth level of the self-transcending per¬
son, the level of decision and action, the existential level of freedom
and responsibility. Glasser emphasizes not only personal responsi¬
bility, but also values, decision, commitment, action, identity, and
autonomy. And he accepts no excuses. Finally, evaluation means a
return to the cognitive levels in order to review critically the pro¬
gram and its implementation in terms of goal fulfillment. Reassess¬
ment can lead to reprogramming and reimplementation.
This, then, in bare bones, is counseling for self-transcendence. It
is an approach guided by the developmental goal of relational
autonomy. It is eclectic in the critical sense of employing any and
every means that can contribute to the achievement of that goal.
The stages of Egan’s overall model reflect the four basic levels of
the developing person striving for self-transcendence: (1) attend¬
ing to experience, (2) dynamic understanding of self and world,
(3) judging goals and programs, and (4) deciding to implement a
program in action. Counseling that follows this paradigm not only
guides a client to develop toward the greater self-transcendence of
relational autonomy, but also provides in the counseling process
itself a concrete model of that very self-transcendence. Egan’s
emphasis on problem-solving may suggest a rather narrow focus
on pedestrian issues of daily life, but interpreting his model in
terms of development and self-transcendence suggests that it is
applicable to problems as big as life itself: the personal problem of
living with others more attentively, more creatively, more realisti¬
cally, more responsibly, more lovingly-all, for the religious person,
in response to the gracious power of an immanent God, who is self¬
transcendence itself.
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
1. On the God within, interiority, and ascent, see Denys Turner, The
Darkness of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp.
50-101. Also see Anne Hunsaker Hawkins, Archetypes of Conversion: The
Autobiographies of Augustine, Bunyan, and Merton (Lewisburg, Pa.: Buck-
nell University Press, 1985). For Merton’s admiration of Augustine and
his Confessions, see Thomas Merton, Run to the Mountain, The Journals of
Thomas Merton 1, ed. Patrick Hart (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco,
1996 [1995]), pp. 3, 21,42, 83.
2. See James W. Fowler, Faithful Change: The Personal and Public Chal¬
lenges of Postmodern Life (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), p. 206.
3. Philip Sheldrake, Befriending Our Desires (Notre Dame, Ind.: Ave

Maria, 1994), p. 7.
4. For the above points on desire, see Sheldrake, pp. 10, 21, 100, 101.
5. I differ somewhat in language here from Sheldrake, who associates

“ought” with aspirations for external ideals (duties, unrealistic dreams) in
contrast to desires which are “more intrinsic to the reality of each person"
(p. 13), but I think we agree on the substantive point.
6. See Sheldrake, p. 126.
7. For an important American critique, see Mark Taylor, Erring: A Post¬

modern A/theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), who
rejects a solitary self that defines itself in opposition to other isolated
selves and argues for a view in which “subjects are never isolated monads
but are always reciprocally related” (p. 135). For a helpful discussion of
159
contemporary critiques of the self, see David Tracy, Plurality and Ambigu¬
ity (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987), pp. 82, 89-90. Also see Dermot
A. Lane’s reflections on “The Self in Crisis” in his Keeping Hope Alive (New
York: Paulist, 1996), pp. 25-41; and Anthony C. Thiselton, Interpreting
God and the Postmodern Self (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), pp. 11-17.
For a developmental perspective on this contemporary criticism, see
Robert Kegan, In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), pp. 324-34.
The self I will be considering here is not an isolated, theoretical think¬
ing subject but is always understood, with John Macmurray, to be a practi¬
cal self as agent that exists only in dynamic relation with others. See the
two volumes of Macmurray’s Gifford Lectures, The Form of the Personal:
The Self as Agent (London: Faber and Faber, 1957), pp. 11-12, 21-23, 31,
and Persons in Relation (London: Faber and Faber, 1961), pp. 12, 17. Also
see Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blarney (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1992), for another penetrating analysis of
otherness as “constitutive of selfhood as such” (p. 3).
The present study seeks to locate the foundations of pastoral counsel¬
ing and spiritual direction not in alien statements or propositions, but in
the self, in its radical desire for relational self-transcendence, and in its
dynamic personal operations—all empirical realities that can be attended
to, understood, and verified by the counselor or director in her or his own
experience.
8. M. Scott Peck, “Foreword” in RobertJ. Wicks, Richard D. Parsons, and

Donald E. Capps, eds., Clinical Handbook of Pastoral Counseling (New
York: Paulist, 1985), p. 1. For a recent integration of psychological and the¬
ological perspectives, see Leroy T. Howe, The Image of God: A Theology of
Pastoral Care and Counseling (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995). For another
effort at integration in a somewhat different context, see Daniel A.
Helminiak, The Human Core of Spirituality: Mind as Psyche and Spirit
(Albany: State University of New York, 1996).
9. Donald S. Browning, “Introduction to Pastoral Counseling" in Wicks

et al., Clinical Handbook, p. 6.
10. Clyde V. Steckel, “Directions in Pastoral Counseling” in Wicks et al.

Clinical Handbook, p. 32.
11. See Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Iden¬
tity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), pp. x, 32-40.
12. In addition to many articles, some cited below, my work on develop-

NOTES 161
ment and conversion is in my Conscience: Development and Self-Transcen¬

dence (Birmingham, Ala.: Religious Education Press, 1981) and Christian
Conversion: A Developmental Interpretation of Autonomy and Surrender
(New York: Paulist, 1986).
CHAPTER 1
1. James W. Fowler, Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development

and the Quest for Meaning (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981), pp.
217-68.
2. Ibid., p. 263.
3. Mary Ford-Grabowsky, “Flaws in Faith Development Theory,” Religious

Education 82 (Winter 1987): 80-93. Also see, by the same author, “What
Developmental Phenomenon is Fowler Studying?” Journal of Psychology
and Christianity 5/3 (Fall 1986): 5-13; “The Fullness of the Christian Faith
Experience: Dimensions Missing in Faith Development Theory,” Journal of
Pastoral Care 41/1 (March 1987): 39-47; and “The Journey of a Pilgrim:
An Alternative to Fowler,” Living Light 24 (March 1988): 242-54.
4. Ford-Grabowsky, “Flaws,” p. 84.
5. Ibid., p. 86.
6. Ibid., p. 89.
7. Ibid., p. 91.
8. Ibid. Actually, Fowler does not say that one ought to be at any particu¬
lar stage at a given age, but rather gives a typical minimal age for each
stage.
9. Ibid., p. 84.
CHAPTER 2
1. See E. Brooks Holifield, A History of Pastoral Care in America: From Sal¬

vation to Self-Realization (Nashville: Abingdon, 1983), p. 12.
2. See ibid., p. 57.
3. See ibid., pp. 69, 76.

4. See ibid., pp. 84-85, 94.
5. See ibid., p. 99.
6. See ibid., pp. 129-30, 132, 141, 143, 151.
7. See ibid., pp. 156-57.
8. See ibid., pp. 159, 178.
9. See ibid., pp. 160, 189-90, 208.
10. See ibid., pp. 222, 223.
11. Rollo May, The Art of Counseling (Nashville: Cokesbury, 1939).
12. See Holifield, p. 252.
13. See ibid., p. 257.
14. See ibid., p. 288.
15. See ibid., pp. 291-92.
16. See ibid., p. 294.
17. Carl R. Rogers, Counseling and Psychotherapy (Boston: Houghton Mif¬

flin, 1942).
18. See Holifield, p. 295.
19. See ibid., pp. 296-97.
20. Carl R. Rogers, Client-Centered Therapy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,

1951).
21. See Holifield, pp. 297-98.
22. Seward Hiltner, Pastoral Counseling (New York and Nashville: Abing-
don-Cokesbury, 1949), p. 19.
23. See ibid., pp. 26-32.
24. See ibid., pp. 47-54.
25. See ibid., pp. 71-77.

NOTES 163
26. Carroll A. Wise, Pastoral Counseling: Its Theory and Practice (New York:
Harper, 1951), p. 45.
27. See ibid., pp. 51, 22, 53-54, 5-6.
28. See ibid., pp. 116, 118, 165-66.
29. Paul E. Johnson, Psychology oj Pastoral Care (New York and Nashville:
Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1953), pp. 34-36.
30. See ibid., pp. 27-30.
31. Ibid., p. 24.
32. See ibid., pp. 100, 101, 17.
33. Wayne E. Oates, The Christian Pastor (Philadelphia: Westminster,

1951), pp. 26, 32.
34. See ibid., pp. 116-38, 130.
35. See Seward Hiltner, Preface to Pastoral Theology (Nashville: Abingdon,

1958) and Seward Hiltner and Lowell G. Colston, The Context of Pastoral
Counseling (Nashville: Abingdon, 1961); also see Holifield, pp. 312-13.
36. Howard J. Clinebell, Jr., Basic Types of Pastoral Counseling (Nashville:

Abingdon, 1966), p. 23.
37. See ibid., pp. 28-36.
38. See ibid., pp. 18, 18-19, 20.
39. Ibid., p. 46.
40. Howard J. Clinebell, Jr., Basic Types of Pastoral Care and Counseling (rev.
ed.; Nashville: Abingdon, 1984), p. 26.
41. See ibid., pp. 32-33.
42. See ibid., pp. 106, 110.
CHAPTER 3
1. M. Muller and A. Haider, “Person" in Sacramentum Mundi, ed. K. Rah-

ner et al. (New York: Herder, 1969), 6:404.
2. Descartes’ attention to inferiority must be clearly distinguished from

Augustine’s or, in this study, from Lonergan’s and Merton’s. Merton, for
example, characterizes Descartes’ subject as a “solipsistic bubble of aware¬
ness” (Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite [New York: New
Directions, 1968], p. 22). Paradigmatic for modern philosophy, this self is
really an object of interior perception, not the conscious self-as-subject we
will see later in this chapter. For a rigorous analysis of the self in modern
philosophy, see Ricoeur, Oneself as Another.
3. For the continuing significance of Locke, as well as for a helpful brief

history of “person” in Western philosophy, see Warren Bourgeois, Persons:
What Philosophers Say About You (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier Uni¬
versity Press, 1995), esp. pp. 81-87.
4. Erik H. Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis (New York: Norton, 1968),
p. 218. For a detailed analysis of the relation of ego, self, and conscious “I,”
see Walter E. Conn, “Erikson’s ‘Identity’: An Essay on the Psychological
Foundations of Religious Ethics,” Zygon 14/2 (June 1979): 125-34.
The meanings of “conscious” and “unconscious” are very tricky.
Although this distinction is commonplace in psychology and ordinary
language, it would usually be more accurate to distinguish within con¬
sciousness between that which is explicitly objectified and that which is
tacit and unobjectified. Unlike the strictly unconscious growth of toe¬
nails, much that we characterize as “unconscious” is conscious but unob-
jectified, and can in various ways be rendered explicitly conscious. On the
“twilight of what is conscious but not objectified,” see Bernard Lonergan,
Method in Theology (New York: Flerder and Flerder, 1972), p. 34.
5. Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis, p. 218.
6. Herbert Fingarette, The Transformation of the Self (New York: Harper &
Row, 1965), pp. 26, 27-28.
7. See ibid., pp. 78-79, 83-84, 89.
9. Erik H. Erikson, “The Galilean Sayings and the Sense of T,” Yale
Review 70 (Spring 1981): 321-62, at 323, quoting from William James, Psy¬
chology: The Briefer Course, ed. G. Allport (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1985 [1892]), p. 43.
10. James, Psychology: The Briefer Course, p. 70.

NOTES 165
11. See Owen Flanagan, Consciousness Reconsidered (Cambridge: MIT

Press, 1992), p. 194.
12. See Bernard Lonergan, “Christ as Subject: A Reply” in Collection, ed. F.

E. Crowe (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967), pp. 164-97. For an illumi¬
nating consideration of the importance of “consciousness as experience”
in the contemporary continental philosophical context, see Fred
Lawrence, “The Fragility of Consciousness: Lonergan and the Postmod¬
ern Concern for the Other,” Theological Studies 54/1 (March 1993): 55-94,
esp. 68-71. For helpful American philosophical discussion and review of
scientific perspectives, see John R. Searle, The Rediscovery of the Mind
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992) and The Mystery of Consciousness (New
York: New York Review of Books, 1997).
13. For a contrasting view of subjective self-presence, see Taylor, Erring:

“the subject thinks about itself thinking about an object that seems to be
different from itself” (p. 39). For a consideration of further details and
complexities of Lonergan’s theory of consciousness, see the essays in the
symposium “Topology and Economy of Consciousness,” Method: Journal
of Lonergan Studies 13/2 (Fall 1995).
14. A patient in a “persistent vegetative state” is not a “self” because

totally without consciousness. Further, though legally alive (not totally
brain dead) and deserving of respect, it may be wondered whether such a
patient is any longer strictly speaking a “person” because permanently
without the potential for consciousness as a result of severe, irreversible
cerebral damage (in contrast to a patient who because temporarily anes¬
thetized for major surgery is not a conscious self but is still a person with
the potential for consciousness).
16. See Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study in Human Understanding (2d

ed.; New York: Philosophical Library, 1958), pp. 319-28. For a helpful
analysis of self-affirmation, see Joseph Flanagan, Quest for Self-Knowledge:
An Essay in Lonergan’s Philosophy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1997), pp. 131-36.
18. Ibid., p. 43.
19. Ibid., p. 44. On the dipolar self and gender identity, see Sidney Calla¬
han, “Does Gender Make a Difference in Moral Decision Making?” Second
Opinion 17/2 (October 1991): 67-77, esp. 70-71: “Gender identity is only
one aspect of self, an aspect of the bodily and social me, of the self as
known....While the I and me are a unified self, the self as knower, the self
of selves appears to be without gender” (70).
21. Ibid., pp. 46, 47.
22. Ibid., p. 48.
23. Ibid., p. 50.
24. Ibid., p. 57 (entire quotation italicized in original).
25. See ibid., pp. 58, 59.
26. The word “thing” is used here in the ordinary informal sense. For a
technical meaning of “thing” as an intelligible, concrete unity distin¬
guished from “body,” see Lonergan, Insight, pp. 245-59.
CHAPTER 4
1. See Sigmund Freud, The Ego and the Id (1923), Standard Edition, 19
(London: Hogarth, 1961).
2. See Heinz Hartmann, Ego Psychology and the Problem of Adaptation

(New York: International Universities Press, 1958 [1939]), pp. 3-21,
74-79, 100-08.
3. See C. G. Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology (1916), Complete

Works, 7 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977): 173-87, and
“On the Nature of the Psyche” (1946), Complete Works, 8 (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969): 159-234, esp. 224-26.
4. See Melanie Klein, The Psycho-Analysis of Children (London: Hogarth

1973 [1932]), pp. 245-67.
5. See Harry Stack Sullivan, The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry (New

York: Norton, 1953), pp. 158-71.
6. See Karen Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward
Self-Realization (New York: Norton, 1950), pp. 155-75.
7. Ronald Fairbairn, An Object-Relations Theory of Personality (New York:

NOTES 167
Basic Books, 1954), p. 137. For an especially illuminating study of object-

relations theory and religious faith, see John McDargh, Psychoanalytic
Object Relations Theory and the Study of Religion: On Faith and the Imaging
of God (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1983). Also see John
McDargh, “The Life of the Self in Christian Spirituality and Contempo¬
rary Psychoanalysis,” Horizons 11/2 (Fall 1984): 344-60.
8. See D. W. Winnicott, The Maturational Process and the Facilitating Envi¬

ronment (New York: International Universities Press, 1965), esp. 140-52.
9. See Heinz Hartmann, Essays in Ego Psychology (New York: Interna¬

tional Universities Press, 1964), p. 127.
10. See Edith Jacobson, The Self and the Object World (New York: Interna¬
tional Universities Press, 1964).
11. See Otto Kernberg, Object-Relations Theory and Clinical Psychoanalysis

(New York: Jason Aronson, 1976), pp. 19-54.
12. See Margaret Mahler, Fred Pine, and Anni Bergman, The Psychological
Birth of the Human Infant: Symbiosis and Individuation (New York: Basic
Books, 1975), pp. 39-120.
13. See Daniel Stern, The Interpersonal World of the Infant (New York:
Basic Books, 1985), pp. 37-182. Also see Fowler, Faithful Change, pp.
26-43.
14. See Heinz Kohut, The Restoration of the Self (New York: International
Universities Press, 1977).
15. See G. S. Klein, Psychoanalytic Theory (New York: International Uni¬

versities Press, 1976).
16. James Masterson, The Search for the Real Self (New York: Free Press,
1988), p. 23 (entire quotation italicized in original).
17. Ibid., p. 24.
18. See ibid., pp. 42-46.
19. See Harry Guntrip, Schizoid Phenomena, Object-Relations and the Self
(New York: International Universities Press, 1968).
20. Erik H. Erikson, “Identity, Psychosocial,” International Encyclopedia of

the Social Sciences 7:61-65, at 61.
On the development of identity and self, also see Ernest S. Wolf, “Self,
Idealization, and the Development of Values,” pp. 56-77, and Augusto
Blasi, “The Development of Identity: Some Implications for Moral Func¬
tioning,” pp. 99-122, in Gil Noam and Thomas Wren, eds., The Moral Self:
Building a Better Paradigm (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993).
21. William James, The Letters of William James, ed. Henry James (Boston:
Atlantic Monthly Press, 1920), 1: 199.
22. Erikson, “Identity, Psychosocial,” p. 61.
23. Erik H. Erikson, Identity and the Life Cycle, Psychological Issues, 1
(New York: International Universities Press, 1959), p. 102.
24. Erik H. Erikson, “Life Cycle,” International Encyclopedia of the Social

Sciences 9:286-92, at 290.
25. Erik H. Erikson, Childhood and Society (2d ed.; New York: Norton,
1963), pp. 261-62.
26. Quoted in Harry Guntrip, Psychoanalytic Theory, Therapy, and the Self
(New York: Basic Books, 1973), p. 92.
27. See ibid., p. 86.
28. Erikson, Childhood and Society, p. 192.
29. See Guntrip, Psychoanalytic Theory, Therapy, and the Self, pp. 50, 42.
30. Michael Polanyi, The Study of Man (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1963), pp. 46, 92, 62.
31. Lonergan, Insight, pp. 472, 473.
32. Ibid., pp. 474, 475.
33. Ibid., p. 477.
35. For a consideration of this theme from the perspective of Ignatian

spirituality, see John English, Choosing Life: The Significance of Personal His¬
tory in Decision-Making (New York: Paulist, 1978). For an interesting dis¬
cussion ol the dipolar self in Augustine’s Confessions (the present
exploring subject and literary creator; the past explored object and liter¬
ary creation), see Rene E. Fortin, Gaining Upon Certainty: Selected Literary
NOTES 169
Criticism, ed. Brian Barbour and Rodney Delasanta (Providence, R.I.:

Providence College Press, 1995), pp. 292-96.
CHAPTER 5
1. See Henri J. M. Nouwen, Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the

Spiritual Life (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975).
2. Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logother-

apy, trans. 1. Lasch (2d ed.; New York: Washington Square Press, 1963
[1959]), p. 175.
3. See Conn, Christian Conversion, pp. 19-25.
4. Kegan, In Over Our Heads, p. 9.
5. See Conn, Conscience: Development and Self-Transcendence, pp. 202-8.
6. Lonergan, Method in Theology, pp. 240, 242.
7. Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation (New York: Dell, 1960

[1949]), pp. 20, 22,41,40, 23.
8. Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Direc¬

tions, 1972 [1961]), pp. 7, 38.
9. See Anne E. Carr, A Search for Wisdom and Spirit: Thomas Merton’s
Theology of the Self (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press,
1988), p. 125.
10. Thomas Merton, “The Inner Experience” (unpublished manuscript at

Thomas Merton Studies Center, Bellarmine College, Louisville, KY), pp.
6-7. Edited selections from this manuscript appear in Cistercian Studies 18
(1983) and 19 (1984).
11. Carr, Search for Wisdom and Spirit, p. 143.
12. See Taylor, Sources of the Self, pp. x, 32-40.
13. Such scriptural passages have linguistic and textual problems that are
beyond our present scope. See, e.g., John L. McKenzie’s comments on
“self” in Mt 16 in The Jerome Biblical Commentary, ed. Raymond E. Brown,
Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Roland E. Murphy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Pren¬
tice-Hall, 1968).
14. See Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (2d ed.; New York: Bantam, 1963
[1956]), pp. 48-49.
15. Ibid., pp. 50, 51.
16. See ibid. For a very helpful consideration of self, sin, and narcissism,
see Donald Capps, The Depleted Self: Sin in a Narcissistic Age (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1993).
17. Fromm, p. 50.
CHAPTER 6
1. Jean Piaget, The Origins of Intelligence in Children, trans. M. Cook

(New York: Norton, 1963 [1952; French 1936]), p. 6.
2. See John Flavell, The Developmental Psychology of Jean Piaget (New

York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1963), p. 59.
3. Jean Piaget, The Construction of Reality in the Child, trans. M. Cook

(New York: Ballantine, 1971 [1954; French 1937]), p. 396.
4. Flavell, p. 60.
5. Piaget, Construction, pp. x-xi.
6. Jean Piaget, Six Psychological Studies, trans. A. Tenzor and ed. D.

Elkind (New York: Random House Vintage, 1968 [French 1964]), pp. 12-
13.
7. See Flavell, p. 61.
8. See Piaget, Construction, pp. 401-2, xi, and Six Studies, pp. 13-14.
9. Piaget, Six Studies, pp. 16-17.
12. Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis, pp. 118, 115; also see p. 116 and
Childhood and Society, p. 250.

NOTES 171
15. Robert Kegan, The Evolving Self: Problems and Process in Human Devel¬
opment (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 77. In his most
recent work, In Over Our Heads, Kegan shifts linguistically from “selves” to
“orders of consciousness,” but the substance of his thought remains,
though more nuanced. For example, within each order he now distin¬
guishes and integrates cognitive, interpersonal, and intrapersonal lines of
development. For a recent consideration of Kegan’s theory within a broad
developmental context, see Gerald Young, Adult Development, Therapy,
and Culture: A Postmodern Synthesis (New York: Plenum, 1997), pp. 46-59.
For another important contribution to a unified developmental perspec¬
tive, see Hans G. Furth, Knowledge as Desire: An Essay on Freud and Piaget
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1987).
16. Kegan, Evolving Self pp. 81-82.
17. Fowler, Faithful Change, pp. 132, 92, 111.
18. Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis, p. 119. For valuable reflections on
the superego, see Hans W. Foewald, Papers on Psychoanalysis (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1980), esp. p. 273, where conscience, though under¬
stood as the “mouthpiece” of the superego, speaks to us “from the point of
view of the inner future which we envision.”
19. Erikson, “Fife Cycle,” p. 289.
20. Erikson, Identity and the Life Cycle, p. 124.
21. Erik H. Erikson, Insight and Responsibility (New York: Norton, 1964),
p. 124 (entire quotation italicized in original).
22. Fawrence Kohlberg, “Moral Stages and Moralization: The Cognitive-

Developmental Approach” in Thomas Fickona, ed., Moral Development
and Behavior: Theory, Research, and Social Issues (New York: Holt, Rinehart
and Winston, 1976), pp. 31-53, at 33.
23. James W. Fowler, “Stages in Faith: The Structural-Developmental

Approach” in Thomas C. Hennessy, ed., Values and Moral Development
(New York: Paulist, 1976), pp. 173-211, at 175.
24. See Fowler, Faithful Change, pp. 47-51, 59, commenting on Ana-Maria
Rizzuto, The Birth of the Living God (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1980).
25. Erikson, “Identity, Psychosocial,” p. 61.
27. Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis, pp. 128, 129, 130.
28. Erikson, Insight and Responsibility, p. 125 (first quotation in paragraph

entirely italicized in original).
29. Erikson, “Life Cycle,” p. 290.
30. See Walter E. Conn, “Personal Identity and Creative Self-Understand¬

ing: Contributions of Jean Piaget and Erik Erikson to the Psychological
Foundations of Theology,” Journal of Psychology and Theology 5/1 (Winter
1977): 34-39.
31. Erikson, Insight and Responsibility, pp. 225, 171, and Identity: Youth and
Crisis, p. 247.
32. Piaget, Six Studies, p. 64.
33. Kegan points out that family and culture hold many expectations of
the adolescent: “to be employable, a good citizen, a critical thinker, emo¬
tionally self-reflective, personally trustworthy, possessed of common
sense and meaningful ideals.” All these are aspects of a common expecta¬
tion that the adolescent “will be able to take out loyalty to or membership
in a wider human community than the one defined by...self-interest.” This
requires that the adolescent give up an “ultimate or absolute relationship”
to his or her own point of view (In Over Our Heads, pp. 19, 23, 24).
34. Kegan, In Over Our Heads, pp. 110, 111. See my consideration of cogni¬
tive conversion below in ch. 7 and, much more fully, in ch. 4 of my Chris¬
tian Conversion, from which this chapter draws.
In order to indicate how contemporary culture makes demands that
require the fourth order consciousness of the Institutional self, Kegan dis¬
cusses how as parents and partners we are expected to: “1. Take care of
the family; establish rules and roles; institute a vision of family purpose. 2.
Support the ongoing growth of the young, including their growth within
and away from the family. 3. Manage boundaries (inside and outside the
family). 4. Set limits on children and on oneself to preserve and protect
childhood. 5. Be psychologically independent from, but closely con¬
nected to, our spouses. 6. Replace an idealized, romanticized approach to
love and closeness with a new conception of love and closeness. 7. Set
limits on children, in-laws, oneself, and extrafamily involvements to pre-
NOTES 173
serve the couple. 8. Support our partner’s development. 9. Communicate

well, directly, and fairly. 10. Have an awareness of the way our personal
history inclines or directs us” (In Over Our Heads, p. 86).
Kegan suggests that “the demands of modern adult life may require a
qualitative transformation in the complexity of mind every bit as funda¬
mental as the transformation from magical thinking to concrete thinking
required of the school-age child, or the transformation from concrete
thinking to abstract thinking required of the adolescent.” Put another way,
“the mental burden of modern life may be nothing less than the extraordi¬
nary cultural demand that each person, in adulthood, create internally an
order of consciousness comparable to that which ordinarily would only
be found at the level of a community’s collective intelligence. This
amounts to the expectation that faithful adherents themselves become
priests and priestesses; or, that the acculturated become cultures unto
themselves” (ibid., p. 134).
35. If women, comfortable at the Interpersonal Stage 3, typically find the

transition to Stage 4 difficult, those who do reach Stage 4 may be more
open to the transition to Stage 5 than men typically are. Men, though
often thought to be most at home in Stage 4, may typically find the transi¬
tion to Stage 3 difficult and thus tend to get stuck at Stage 2, whose impe¬
rialistic individualism can perhaps be confused with genuine Stage 4
independence as easily as Stage 3 fusion is confused with genuine Stage 5
intimacy (a Stage 4 self, remember, has successfully appropriated the
interpersonal orientation of Stage 3).
36. Erikson, Insight and Responsibility, p. 263.
37. Richard I. Evans, Dialogue with Erik Erikson (New York: Dutton, 1969
[1967]), p. 48.
39. Erikson, Childhood and Society, p. 263. Erikson’s own technical term
for “developmental” is “epigenetic.”
40. Erikson, Insight and Responsibility, pp. 127-28.
41. Erik H. Erikson, “Reflections on the Dissent of Contemporary Youth,”

International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 51 (1970): 11-22, at 16.
42. Kegan, Evolving Self, p. 104.

To help distinguish between the Stage 4 self-as-system or self-as-form
and the Stage 5 self that transcends system or form, Kegan specifies two
related questions: “(1) Do we see the self-as-system as complete and

whole or do we regard the self-as-system as incomplete, only a partial con¬
struction of all that the self is? (2) Do we identify with the self-as-form
(which self then interacts with other selves-as-forms) or do we identify
with the process of form creation (which brings forms into being and sub¬
tends their relationship)?” (In Over Our Heads, p. 313). From another
angle, we can ask: do we take the self-as-system (form) as subject (Stage 4)
or do we take it as object (Stage 5) (ibid., p. 316)?
43. See Kegan, Evolving Self, p. 104. Kegan’s distinction between fusion
and intimacy may support Erikson against critics who found his identity
before intimacy sequence male-centered.
44. Evans, Dialogue, p. 51.
46. Erikson, Insight and Responsibility, p. 130.
48. See Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and

Women’s Development (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982) and
Walter E. Conn, “Caring Justice-A Conversation,” New Ideas in Psychology
5/2 (1987): 245-51. For a critique of Gilligan’s thesis, see Callahan, “Does
Gender Make a Difference in Moral Decision Making?” pp. 67-77. Also
see Sidney Callahan, In Good Conscience: Reason and Emotion in Moral
Decision Making (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), pp. 195-98.
49. Lawrence Kohlberg and Carol Gilligan, “The Adolescent as a Philoso¬

pher: The Discovery of the Self in a Postconventional World,” Daedalus
100/4 (Fall 1971): 1051-86, at 1068. On how the universal ethical princi¬
ples of Stage 6 are always related to concrete contexts, see John Michael
Murphy and Carol Gilligan, “Moral Development in Late Adolescence and
Adulthood: A Critique and Reconstruction of Kohlberg’s Theory,” Human
Development 23 (1980): 77-104.
For a valuable consideration of the ethical dimension in pastoral coun¬
seling, see Don S. Browning, The Moral Context of Pastoral Care (Philadel¬
phia: Westminster, 1976).
50. Fowler, “Stages in Faith,” p. 185.
51. See C.G. Jung, The Stages oi Life” and “Psychotherapists or the
Clergy” in his Modern Man in Search of a Soul (New York: Harcourt, Brace
NOTES 175
& World, 1933). Also see Janice Brewi and Anne Brennan, Mid-Life: Psy¬
chological and Spiritual Perspectives (New York: Crossroad, 1982).
53. Erikson, “Life Cycle,” p. 291. Although the last stage is explicitly des¬
ignated as religious, the fact is that religion permeates the life cycle from
the very beginnings of basic trust. For a helpful guide on this, see Robert
C. Fuller, Religion and the Life Cycle (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988).
54. Lawrence Kohlberg, “Education, Moral Development, and Faith,”

Journal of Moral Education 4/1 (1974): 5-16, at 11.
55. Lawrence Kohlberg, “Stages and Aging in Moral Development—Some

Speculations,” Gerontologist 13/4 (Winter 1973): 497-502, at 500.
56. Ibid., pp. 500, 501.
57. James W. Fowler, “Life/Faith Patterns: Structures of Trust and Loy¬

alty” in James W. Fowler and Sam Keen, Life Maps: Conversations on the
Journey of Faith, ed. Jerome Berryman (Waco, Tex.: Word Books, 1978), pp.
14-101, at 88.
CHAPTER 7
1. For excellent practical reflections on this theme by an experienced
director, see William A. Barry, “Now Choose Life’’: Conversion as the Way to
Life (New York: Paulist, 1990).
Spiritual direction should not be understood as one person directing
another person’s spiritual life; rather, the “direction” comes from God’s
presence and inspiration, which the director assists the directee to notice
and respond to. Thus, some prefer the term spiritual “companionship”
rather than “direction.”
There are many ways to define and relate pastoral counseling and spiri¬
tual direction. My approach based on the distinction between develop¬
ment and conversion is offered merely as a suggestion some readers may
find helpful, not as a rigid compartmentalization.
For a consideration of some similarities and differences between pas¬
toral counseling and spiritual direction, see Israel Galindo, “Spiritual
Direction and Pastoral Counseling: Addressing the Needs of the Spirit,”
Journal of Pastoral Care 51/4 (Winter 1997): 395-402.
2. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: New

American Library Mentor, 1958 [1902]), pp. 164, 146. For an excellent
analysis of conversion from social scientific perspectives, see Lewis R.
Rambo, Understanding Religious Conversion (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1993).
3. Thomas Merton, Contemplation in a World of Action (Garden City,

N.Y.: Doubleday Image, 1973 [1971]), p. 225.
4. For his autobiographical account, see Thomas Merton, The Seven

Storey Mountain (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Image, 1970 [1948]). For
helpful guidance on interpreting such autobiographical accounts in terms
of genre and historical context, see Karl F. Morrison, Understanding Con¬
version (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1992), Marjorie
O’Rourke Boyle, Loyola’s Acts: The Rhetoric of the Self (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1997), and Jeffrey D. Martlett, “Conversion Methodol¬
ogy and the Case of Cardinal Newman,” Theological Studies 58/4 (Decem¬
ber 1997): 669-85.
5. For Merton’s published diary reflections on this mature experience,

see his The Sign of Jonas (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Image, 1956
[1953]), Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday
Image, 1968 [1966]), and The Asian Journal, ed. N. Burton, P. Hart, andj.
Laughlin (New York: New Directions, 1973). Also, after his stipulated
twenty-five years past his death (1968), Merton’s complete private jour¬
nals are now being published in seven volumes by HarperSanFrancisco.
6. See Lonergan, Method in Theology, pp. 237-43, and “Natural Right and
Historical Mindedness,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical
Association 51 (1977): 132-43, at 140-41.
7. For a detailed interpretation of Merton’s youthful conversion as a

basic Christian moral conversion, and for expansion on other conversions
in a developmental context, see Conn, Christian Conversion, from which
this chapter draws.
8. Merton, Seven Storey Mountain, pp. 184, 203.
9. See Erikson, Childhood and Society, pp. 261-63. Also see David D.
Cooper’s Eriksonian “Young Man Merton: A Speculative Epilogue” in his
Thomas Merton’s Art of Denial: The Evolution of a Radical Humanist
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989), pp. 270-91.
10. See Lawrence Kohlberg, The Psychology of Moral Development (San

Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984), pp. 172-73.
NOTES 177
11. See Piaget, Six Psychological Studies, pp. 61-64.
12. For excellent biographical and interpretive studies of Merton, see

Monica Furlong, Merton: A Biography (San Francisco: Harper & Row,
1980); Michael Mott, The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1984); John Howard Griffin, Follow the Ecstasy: The
Hermitage Years of Thomas Merton (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1993 [1983]);
Elena Malits, The Solitary Explorer: Thomas Merton’s Transforming Journey
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980); and Anthony T. Padovano, The
Human Journey: Thomas Merton, Symbol of a Century (Garden City, N.Y.:
Doubleday, 1982).
13. See Erikson, Childhood and Society, pp. 263-66.
14. Lonergan, Method in Theology, p. 105.
15. Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p. 157.
16. Cooper, p. 187, quoting Merton, Contemplation in a World of Action, p.

227. Also see Griffin, pp. 46-99, esp. 72, 81.
17. See Walter E. Conn, “The Ontogenetic Ground of Value,” Theological

Studies 39/2 (June 1976): 313-35, at 328-35.
Through such conversion of consciousness, writes Kegan, “Our loyalty
is transformed from adherence to a value to the process of originating or
inventing what is valuable” (In Over Our Heads, p. 169).
18. See Walter E. Conn, “Merton’s ‘True Self’: Moral Autonomy and Reli¬
gious Conversion,” Journal of Religion 65/4 (October 1985): 513-29.
19. See Merton, Seven Storey Mountain, pp. 378-79.
20. See Thomas Merton, A Search for Solitude, The Journals of Thomas
Merton 3, ed. Lawrence S. Cunningham (San Francisco: HarperSanFran-
cisco, 1996), pp. 225, 3034, 309, 313, 319, 330-31, 341-44, 355-56.
21. See Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p. 280.
22. See Erikson, Childhood and Society, pp. 266-68.
23. See Kohlberg, Psychology of Moral Development, pp. 491-96.
24. See Merton, Seven Storey Mountain, pp. 376-82.
25. See Thomas Merton, Dancing in the Water of Life: Seeking Peace in the
Hermitage, The Journals of Thomas Merton, 5, ed. Robert E. Daggy (San

Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997), p. 204.
26. See Seward Hiltner, “Toward a Theology of Conversion in the Fight of

Psychology,” Pastoral Psychology 17 (September 1966): 35-42. For a socio¬
logical study of conversion in older adults, see Richard M. Erikson, Late
Have I Loved Thee: Stories of Religious Conversion and Commitment in Later
Life (New York: Paulist, 1995). For a recent and very readable considera¬
tion of spiritual search and conversion, see Harry R. Moody and David
Carroll, The Five Stages of the Soul (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1997),
who distinguish call, search, struggle, breakthrough, and return.
27. See Kohlberg, “Stages and Aging in Moral Development,” pp. 500-1.
28. See Erikson, Childhood and Society, pp. 268-69. Also see Walter E.
Conn, “Adult Conversions,” Pastoral Psychology 34/4 (1986): 225-36.
29. See Fowler, Stages of Faith, p. 198.
30. Fonergan, Method in Theology, pp. 240, 242.
31. I articulate religious conversion in this paragraph in Christian theistic

terms, but, as the discussion of Kohlberg’s “Stage 7” and the preceding
paragraph make clear, this articulation is neither necessary nor exclusive.
32. See Conn, “Merton’s True Self’”.
33. Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p. 157.
34. Merton, Asian Journal, pp. 233-36.
35. Carr, Search for Wisdom and Spirit, p. 43, quoting Merton, “Inner
Experience,” pp. 6-8.
36. Merton, “Inner Experience,” pp. 6-8.
37. Carr, p. 43.
38. Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite (New York: New Direc¬
tions, 1968), p. 49.
39. Merton, “Inner Experience,” p. 9.
40. Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite, p. 71.
41. Merton, “Inner Experience,” p. 10.

NOTES 179
42. Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite, p. 24.
43. Ibid., pp. 72, 75.
44. George Kilcourse, Ace of Freedoms: Thomas Merton’s Christ (Notre

Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), pp. 212, 219-20.
45. Lonergan, Method in Theology, pp. 77, 342.
46. Merton, Seeds of Contemplation, p. 41 (entire quotation italicized in

original).
47. For a consideration of the true self and false self in Merton’s poetry,
see Kilcourse, passim.
48. See Carr, pp. 106-8.
49. Thomas Merton, “Day of a Stranger” in A Thomas Merton Reader, ed.

Thomas P. McDonnell (rev. ed.; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Image, 1974
[1962]), p. 434; and Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p. 151.
50. See Conn, “Merton’s ‘True Self.’”
51. The importance given to conversion in the contemporary American

Catholic community is seen in the fact that it is promoted both officially
by major programs like RENEW and the RCIA (see Robert D. Duggan, ed.,
Conversion and the Catechumenate [New York: Paulist, 1984]) and unoffi¬
cially by groups like Call to Action (see “Call to Action News,” a supple¬
ment in the National Catholic Reporter 34/11 [16 January 1998]).
CHAPTER 8
1. Fowler, Stages of Faith, p. 287.
2. Ibid., p. 288.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., p. 289.
5. See ibid., p. 290.
6. See ibid., p. 264.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., p. 265.
9. Indeed, Jung’s self may be more heuristic than actual, a goal of indi¬
viduating development rather than a presently existing reality, as Ford-
Grabowsky seems to make it.
10. Ford-Grabowsky, “Flaws in Faith Development Theory,” p. 85.
11. See ibid., pp. 85, 86.
12. Fowler, Faithful Change, p. 20.
13. James W. Fowler, “Faith Development Theory and the Aims of Reli¬
gious Socialization” in Gloria Durka and Joan-Marie Smith, eds., Emerging
Issues in Religious Education (New York: Paulist, 1976), pp. 187-211, at 199,
200.
14. Ibid., p. 200.
18. Ibid., pp. 259, 260.
19. Ibid., pp. 261, 262.
20. Ibid., p. 263.
21. Ibid., p. 281; on structure/content distinction, see ibid., pp. 249, 272.
22. Ibid., pp. 281-82 (entire quotation italicized in original).
23. See ibid., pp. 276-77, 282, 275, 285-86.
24. Ibid., pp. 287, 287-88.
25. Ibid., pp. 290, 291.
26. See, e.g., Ford-Grabowsky, “Flaws,” p. 83.
27. See Conn, Christian Conversion, p. 27.
28. Further, a focus on conversion as structural change takes account of

Ford-Grabowsky’s point (“Flaws,” p. 85) that the meaning of development
NOTES 181
in Fowler’s theory is not univocal. This focus makes it clear that there is an
explicit existential as well as an implicit natural dimension in normative
stage development (see Conn, Christian Conversion, pp. 110-16).
29. An exception to her uncritical pattern may be Mary’s criticism of the

deception, arrogance, and brainwashing she found in the Followers of
God, her first Christian community, but this may be better explained as
issuing from her stubborn counterdependent stance.
31. See, e.g., ibid., p. 226.
32. See Ford-Grabowsky, “Flaws,” p. 89.
APPENDIX
1. See Gerard Egan, The Skilled Helper (Monterey, Cal.: Brooks/Cole,

1982).
2 See Gerald Corey, Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy

(Monterey, Cal.: Brooks/Cole, 1982).
3. These two phases in Stage 2 may be distinguished in terms of subject-

pole (first) and object-pole (second). In spiritual direction, discernment
focuses especially on the subject-pole, on prayerfully understanding the
self under God’s guidance (see, e.g., the classic “Rules for the Discern¬
ment of Spirits” in the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola). For spe¬
cific decision making leading to concrete action at the object-pole,
spiritual directors will also need to help directees with some methodical
approach (see, e.g., the ethical method presented in Daniel C. Maguire,
The Moral Choice [Garden City, N.Y. Doubleday, N.Y. 1978]).
INDEX
Included from notes, in addition to terms from substantive discussions,
are authors of articles and books as well as editors of books which have
no designated author. In cases of multiple authors or editors, the name
of the first is included. The term “self” appears only in its compound
forms.
Adler, Alfred, 25, 71 Capps, Donald E., 160, 170

Alienated self, 76 Care, 108, 109, 123, 124, 132
Anxiety, 45, 61, 88, 145 Carr, Anne E., 78, 129, 169, 178,
Aquinas, Thomas, 39 179
Augustine of Hippo, 1, 39, 40, Character, 23, 24, 39, 56, 76,
70, 114, 159, 164, 168 89, 98, 135
Autonomy, 5, 26, 29, 36, 37, 58, Clare of Assisi, 114
60, 74, 86, 89, 90, 91, 106, Clinebell, HowardJ., 20, 32, 33,
107, 109, 124, 125, 126, 128, 34, 113, 163
131, 132, 136, 140, 145, 152, Cognitive Therapy, 155, 156
153, 158 Compassion, 124, 128, 129, 132
Conn, Walter E., 161, 164, 169,
Barbour, Brian, 169 172, 174, 176, 177, 178, 179,
Barry, William A., 175 180, 181
Beck, Aaron, 156 Conscience, 39, 54, 73, 90, 91,
Behavior Therapy, 155, 157 109, 120, 124, 132, 171. See
Blasi, Augusto, 168 also Superego
Boethius, 39 Consciousness, 6, 15, 16, 39,
Boyle, Marjorie O’Rourke, 176 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48,
Brewi, Janice, 175 49,50, 51,53,54, 55,56, 57,
Brown, Raymond E., 169 62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68, 70, 76,
Browning, Don S., 160, 174 77, 80, 84, 85, 90, 102, 128,
Buber, Martin, 41 129, 130, 139, 141, 143, 147,
164, 165, 173, 177. See also
Callahan, Sidney, 165, 174 Unconscious
Calvin, John, 79 Conversion, 2, 6, 12, 16, 17, 18,
182
INDEX 183
19, 22, 33, 36, 38, 65, 74, 75, 135, 137, 140, 141, 142, 144,
78, 108, 112, 113, 114, 115, 145, 146, 147, 150, 151, 152,
116, 117, 118, 119, 124, 126, 154, 158, 171, 173, 175, 176
132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, Dewey, John, 24
141, 143, 144, 146, 147, 148, Differentiation, 4, 41, 59, 60,
149, 150, 151, 175, 176, 178, 61,65,67,74, 82, 84, 86, 87,
179, 180; affective, 36, 78, 88, 89, 106, 115. See also
116, 117, 118, 120, 121, 122, Integration
127, 128, 132, 147, 149, 151, Dipolar self, 6, 52, 56, 57, 63,
152; cognitive (critical), 36, 70, 86, 138, 140, 165, 168
78, 116, 117, 118, 122, 123, Duggan, Robert D., 179
124, 125, 126, 128, 132, 147, Duns Scotus,John, 39
149, 150, 151, 172; moral, 36, Duplex self, 46, 52
78, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, Durka, Gloria, 180
122, 123, 125, 132, 147, 149,
150, 151, 176; religious, 36, Edwards, Jonathan, 22
37, 74, 116, 117, 118, 127, Egan, Gerard, 153, 154, 155,
128, 130, 132, 147, 149, 152, 156, 158, 181
178 Ego, 6, 9, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 24,
Cooper, David D., 122, 176, 177 38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46,
Corey, Gerald, 153, 155, 181 51, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61, 62, 63,
Crisis, 86, 89, 90, 91, 95, 96, 64, 65, 66, 73, 76, 116, 129,
97, 98, 100, 103, 104, 108, 130, 134, 135, 138, 139, 140,
110, 114, 119, 120, 122, 132, 144, 148, 164
145, 146, 151, 152 Egocentrism, 16, 17, 21, 29, 36,
75, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 89, 92,
Decentration, 88, 92, 140, 141 93, 94, 96, 98, 104, 119, 120,
Descartes, Rene, 40, 50, 164 122
Desire, 1, 2, 5, 19, 22, 24, 34, Ego Psychology, 32, 63, 134,
35, 37, 38, 39, 44, 45, 48, 50, 136
51, 54, 59, 60, 65, 66, 67, 68, Empirical self, 76
70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 77, 78, English, John, 168
82, 85,86, 103, 113, 116, 121, Erikson, Erik H., 14, 41, 43, 46,
127, 130, 141, 151, 152, 153, 57, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68, 81,
154, 156, 159 83, 86,87, 88, 89, 90, 91,94,
Development, 2, 6, 17, 18, 19, 95, 96, 97, 98, 100, 103, 104,
23,38,42, 45,59, 60, 61,65, 105, 106, 108, 110, 111, 114,
67, 68, 81, 82, 84, 85, 87, 88, 116, 119, 120, 123, 127, 141,
90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 97, 99, 142, 145, 146, 151, 152, 164,
105, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 167, 168, 170, 171, 172, 173,
112, 113, 115, 116, 118, 122, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178
123, 124, 126, 127, 132, 134, Erikson, Richard M., 178
Evans, Richard L, 173, 174 Gestalt Therapy, 155, 156

Existential psychotherapy, 32, Gilligan, Carol, 108, 174
41, 42, 153 Glasser, William, 32, 158
External self, 76 Griffin, John Howard, 177
Guntrip, Harry, 57, 63, 65, 66,
Fairbairn, Ronald, 42, 57, 58, 68, 75, 78, 167, 168
59, 61, 63, 65, 66, 166
False self, 59, 61, 62, 63, 65, 75, Hartmann, Heinz, 41, 57, 59,
76, 78, 80, 115, 129, 131, 179. 63, 65, 166, 167
See also True self Hawkins, Anne Hunsaker, 159
Fichte, J. G., 43, 44 Hegel, G. W. F., 41
Fingarette, Herbert, 44, 45, 164 Helminiak, Daniel A, 160
Flanagan, Joseph, 165 Hennessy, Thomas C., 171
Flanagan, Owen, 48, 165 Hildegard of Bingen, 15, 16, 17,
Flavell, John, 84, 170 18, 19, 134, 138, 139, 140,
Ford-Grabowsky, Mary, 15, 16, 148, 150
17, 18, 19, 134, 135, 137, 138, Hiltner, Seward, 26, 27, 28, 31,
139, 140, 141, 144, 147, 148, 32, 34, 126, 162, 163, 178
150, 161, 180, 181 Holifield, E. Brooks, 20, 23, 24,
Fortin, Rene E., 168 25, 27, 31, 161, 162, 163
Fowler, James W., 11, 12, 13, 14, Horney, Karen, 25, 26, 27, 41,
15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 81, 83, 90, 45, 57, 58, 166
94, 95, 99, 100, 107, 110, 111, Howe, Leroy T., 160
116, 127, 131, 134, 135, 136, Hume, David, 40, 46
137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142,
144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, “I”, 6, 38, 41,42,43,44, 45,46,
150, 151, 152, 159, 161, 167, 47,48, 49,50, 51,52, 56, 57,
171, 174, 175, 178, 180, 181 58, 60, 63, 65, 68, 69, 70, 76,
Francis of Assisi, 114 86, 129, 138, 164, 166. See
Frankl, Victor, 42, 71, 72, 169 also Self-as-subject; Subject-
Freud, Sigmund, 24, 27, 41, 43, pole
44, 57, 58, 61,62, 63, 65,70, Ibsen, Henrik, 101
71,73,74,79, 89, 90,91, 166 Identity, 6, 39, 40, 41, 46, 60,
Fromm, Erich, 25, 26, 41, 79, 63, 64, 65, 76, 87, 95, 97, 98,
170 99, 100, 102, 103, 104, 105,
Fuller, Robert C., 175 106, 114, 116, 119, 120, 121,
Furlong, Monica, 177 127, 128, 129, 132, 137, 141,
Furth, Hans G., 171 142, 145, 146, 151, 152, 153,
Fusion, 90, 103, 105, 144, 151, 165, 166, 168, 174
173, 174. See also Intimacy Ignatius of Loyola, 114, 181
Illusory self, 76
Galindo, Israel, 175 Inner self, 76, 77, 129, 130
INDEX 185
Insight, 24, 25, 29, 30, 31, 32, 93, 99, 102, 103, 106, 107,
33, 104, 124, 156, 157 109, 110, 111, 116, 119, 123,
Integration, 2, 3, 4, 6, 38, 44, 124, 126, 127, 151, 152, 171,
45,51,61,63,64, 67, 68, 73, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178
74, 87, 88, 89, 92, 95, 96, 97, Kohut, Heinz, 42, 57,61, 167
106, 108, 110, 115, 122, 131, Koppel, Ted, 114
135, 137, 141, 146, 148, 160.
See also Differentiation Lane, Dermot A., 160
Interiority, 39, 40, 42, 106, 108, Lawrence, Lred, 165
110, 122, 126, 130, 159, 164. Lickona, Thomas, 171
See also Subjectivity Life cycle, 86, 87, 103, 106, 108,
Intimacy, 62, 95, 103, 104, 105, 110, 119, 142
120, 121, 130, 137, 142, 144, Locke, John, 42
145, 151, 173, 174. See also Loewald, Hans W., 171
Fusion Lonergan, Bernard, 6, 48, 49,
50,51,66, 67, 68,74, 75,77,
Jacobson, Edith, 57, 59, 167 78, 83, 116, 121, 127, 143,
James, William, 23, 41, 46, 47, 152, 153, 155, 158, 164, 165,
48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 58, 166, 168, 169, 176, 177, 178,
64, 68, 114, 115, 138, 143, 179
164, 165, 166, 168, 175, 180 Love, 1, 10, 17, 30, 32, 33, 34,
John the Baptist, 114 35, 36, 37, 40, 52, 61, 71, 72,
Johnson, Paul E., 27, 29, 30, 32, 73, 74, 75, 76, 79, 80, 94,
34, 163 104, 108, 111, 112, 114, 116,
Jung, C.G.,6, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 118, 120, 121, 122, 123, 127,
27,43,44, 57, 58, 110, 126, 128, 130, 131, 132, 144, 146,
134, 138, 139, 140, 144, 148, 151, 152, 154, 155, 158, 172
166, 174, 180
McDargh, John, 167
Kant, Immanuel, 41, 43, 46 McKenzie, John L., 169
Kegan, Robert, 73, 81, 83, 87, Macmurray, John, 160
88, 89,90, 92, 100, 101, 105, Maguire, Daniel C., 181
106, 137, 142, 144, 146, 151, Mahler, Margaret, 57, 60, 61,
160, 169, 171, 172, 173, 174 62, 65, 82, 167
Kernberg, Otto, 42, 57, 59, 60, Malits, Elena, 177
167 Martlett, Jeffrey D., 176
Kierkegaard, Soren, 41 Maslow, Abraham, 41, 69
Kilcourse, George, 130, 179 Masterson, James, 57, 62, 65,
King, Martin Luther, 110 167
Klein, George, 57, 61, 62, 167 May, Rollo, 24, 25, 26, 41, 162
Klein, Melanie, 57, 58, 166 “Me”, 6, 38, 39, 41, 45, 46, 48,
Kohlberg, Lawrence, 13, 81, 83, 49, 50,51,52, 53, 54, 55,56,
57, 59, 65, 68, 70, 86, 138, 59, 60, 62, 63,. 65, 66, 70, 75,
143, 166; material, 53, 54, 55, 82, 86, 88, 90, 167
56; social, 53, 54, 55, 56, 58,
143, 166; spiritual, 53, 54, 55, Padovano, Anthony T., 177
56. See also Self-as-object; Pascal, Blaise, 40
Object- pole Peck, M. Scott, 3, 160
Mead, G. H., 41 Person, 6, 9, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19,
Meaning, 6, 10, 13, 28, 29, 32, 22, 24, 29, 30, 38, 39, 40, 42,
33,35,42, 44, 45,51,56, 63, 49, 51, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 63,
65, 72, 73, 87, 95, 97, 100, 64, 65, 66, 67, 71, 74, 75, 78,
107, 110, 111, 113, 117, 126, 79, 87, 105, 109, 115, 118,
127, 128, 153, 155 119, 130, 134, 135, 139, 140,
Memory, 70 141, 143, 153, 154, 157, 158,
Merton, Thomas, 1, 74-78, 115- 164, 165
132, 149, 159, 164, 169, 176, Piaget, Jean, 13, 14, 74, 81-88,
177, 178, 179 91, 94, 97, 98, 104, 116, 119,
Monica, Saint, 114 122, 141, 170, 172, 177
Moody, Harry R., 178 Polanyi, Michael, 66, 68, 69,
Morrison, Karl F., 176 100, 168
Mott, Michael, 177 Psychoanalysis, 6, 25, 32, 41,
Muller, M., 163 42,43,44, 46, 57, 58, 60, 61,
Murphy, John Michael, 174 63, 65, 70, 79, 85, 155, 156
Mutuality, 28, 90, 92, 97, 99, Public self, 26
100, 103, 104, 132, 140, 143,
151 Rahner, Karl, 39, 163
Rambo, Lewis R., 176
Narcissism, 35, 61, 85, 86, 120, Rank, Otto, 27
170 Rational-Emotive Therapy, 155,
Narcissistic self, 76 156
Neurotic self, 76 Reality Therapy, 32, 155, 157
Niebuhr, H. Richard, 25, 41 Real self, 26, 58, 62, 64, 65, 70,
Niebuhr, Reinhold, 25 79, 80, 129. See also True self
Noam, Gil, 168 Relationship, 5, 9, 10, 11, 13,
Nouwen, Henri J. M., 71, 169 28, 29, 30, 32, 33, 34, 39, 40,
42, 45, 56, 58, 63, 65,70, 71,
Oates, Wayne E., 27, 30, 31, 32, 74, 88,89, 99, 100, 101, 104,
163 105, 126, 139, 140, 143, 144,
Object-pole, 6, 52, 57, 65, 88, 145, 146, 151, 152, 153, 154,
90, 92, 100, 105, 138, 140, 158
141, 146, 181. See also “Me”, Relativism, 93, 100, 102, 103,
Self-as-object 104, 106, 107, 111
Object relations, 6, 42, 57, 58, Richard of St. Victor, 39
INDEX 187
Ricoeur, Paul, 109, 160, 164 115, 116, 121, 127, 129, 130,
Rizzuto, Ana-Maria, 95, 171 132, 150, 151, 153, 154, 156,
Rogers, Carl R., 25, 27, 28, 29, 157, 158, 160
30, 31, 32, 41, 154, 162 Selman, Robert, 13
Shame, 61, 90, 145
Searle, John R., 165 Sheldrake, Philip, 1, 159
Self-actualization, 18, 26, 35, Soul, 2, 21, 22, 51, 78
42, 72, 111, 153 Steckel, Clyde, 160
Self-as-object, 50, 52, 55, 56, Stern, Daniel, 60, 61, 82, 167
59,61,65,70,74, 80, 86, Subject, 6, 15, 38, 39, 44, 45,
138, 143. See also “Me”, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 67, 74,
Object-pole 80, 84, 87, 88, 89, 101, 127,
Self-as-subject, 45, 49, 50, 55, 129, 130, 142, 159, 174
56, 65, 69, 73, 74, 75, 77, 80, Subjectivity, 39, 41, 42, 45, 55,
86, 138, 143. See also “I”, 56, 58, 60, 62, 64, 65, 69, 75,
Subject-pole 84, 87, 95, 108, 131, 139,
Self-creation, 40, 56, 106, 153, 140, 165. See also Interiority
154 Subject-pole, 6, 51, 52, 57, 65,
Self-culture, 21, 23, 27 77, 88, 92, 100, 105, 138,
Self-denial, 4, 20, 21, 22, 27, 31, 140, 141, 146, 181. See also
35, 38, 72, 137 “I”, Self-as-subject
Self-fulfillment, 4, 26, 31, 33,
Sullivan, Harry Stack, 31, 57,
35, 71, 72, 108, 132
58, 66, 166
Self-love, 6, 21, 22, 27, 38, 78,
Superego, 43, 61, 65, 90, 91,
79, 80, 112
171. See also Conscience
Self-mastery, 21, 23, 27, 38
Self Psychology, 6, 42, 57, 60,
Taylor, Charles, 5, 78, 160, 169
61, 64, 70, 82
Self-realization, 4, 20, 21, 24, Taylor, Mark, 159, 165
25,26, 27, 28, 30, 31,32, 33, Teresa of Avila, 114
34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 72, 73, 97, Tertullian, 39
112, 113,115 Thiselton, Anthony C., 160
Self-sacrifice, 24, 35, 71, 72 Tillich, Paul, 25
Self-surrender, 4, 35, 116, 117, Tracy, David, 160
128, 152 Transactional Analysis, 32, 155,
Self-transcendence, 4, 5, 6, 19, 156
20, 28, 29, 30, 31,33, 34, 35, Transcendent self, 76, 78
36, 37, 38, 42, 44, 45, 47, 50, Transpersonal psychology, 6
51, 52, 56, 59, 64, 65, 71, 72, True self, 6, 35, 37, 42, 59, 63,
73, 74, 75, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 65, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77,
82, 85,86,87, 89,91,93,97, 78, 115, 129, 131, 179. See
104, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, also Real self; False self
Trust, 86, 87, 89, 94, 96, 136, 65, 72, 73, 74, 91, 94, 95, 96,
137, 140, 145 97, 101, 104, 105, 107, 109,
Turner, Denys, 159 119, 120, 121, 123, 126, 128,
131, 132, 136, 140, 147, 148,
Unconscious, 6, 15, 16, 24, 32, 149, 150, 151, 153, 154, 155,
39, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 56, 57, 158, 177
62, 63, 64, 68, 110, 147, 164.
See also Consciousness Wicks, RobertJ., 160
Unity, 44, 45, 47, 50, 56, 61, 66, Winnicott, D. W., 42, 57, 59, 61,
67, 68, 69, 70, 73, 87, 114, 63, 65, 66, 167
115, 127, 138 Wise, Carroll A., 26, 28, 29, 32,
Unity-in-tension, 2, 6, 67, 68, 34, 163
138 Wolf, Ernest S., 168
Value, 25, 29, 35, 36, 56, 61, 64, Young, Gerald, 171
3 1127 D00L.B740
DATE DUE
“With the publication of The Desiring Self, Walter
Conn establishes himself as one of the most important
contemporary contributors to the field of psychology
and spirituality.” —Lewis R. Rambo
Editor, Pastoral Psychology
“The fundamental desire of the self” writes Walter Conn, “is to

transcend itself in relationship: to the world, to others, to God”
But only a strong, developed self has the strength to achieve that
goal.This volume explores the two movements in the journey
to transcendence.The first is the drive to be an integrated and
powerful self.The second is to leave that behind and move beyond
the self into relationship.The two movements are inextricably
joined—separation and attachment, autonomy and relationship.
Humans are pulled simultaneously by the urge to be and to be for.
The Desiring Self is an explanation and a practical guide to the
process of self-transcendence. Using case studies as well as insights
from psychology and theology, it takes readers through the steps
of understanding themselves as incarnate, integrated and yet
transcendent beings bent on discovering their “true selves” as
known by God. It is a book to be read and relished by pastoral
counselors, spiritual directors, readers exploring the confluence
of psychology and religion and all persons on the journey of
self-transcendence.
Walter E. Conn is professor of theology and religious studies

at Villanova University and editor of Horizons, a journal of the
College Theology Society. He is the author of five books, including
Christian Conversion (Paulist Press) and Conscience: Development and
Self-Transcendence (Religious Education Press). He lives in Philadelphia.
ISBN 0-8091-3831-X
5 1 99 5>
Paulist Press
$19.95
9 78 8 9 138319

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Rooting Pastoral Counseling

and Spiritual Direction

The Desiring Self

Rooting Pastoral Counseling

Copyright © 1998 by Walter E. Conn

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Cover design by Tim McKeen

Published by Paulist Press

Printed and bound in the

2. From Self-Denial to Self-Realization: An American History 20

3. Understanding the Self 38

4. The Self in Post-Freudian Psychoanalytic Theory 57

5. Self-Transcendence, the True Self, and Self-Love 71

6. The Developing Self: A Pastoral Counseling Guide 81

The Middle and Older Adult: The Quest for Interiority

7. The Self in Radical Transformation: Spiritual Direction

8. Mary Revisited 134

Appendix: Self-Transcendence in Counseling 153

To Joann Wolski Conn, Eileen Flanagan, and Phillip Bennett

Desire is at the heart of Christian experience. From Augustine’s

The psychology-theology connection in pastoral counseling and

assumes that counseling is compatible with Christian faith. An alto¬

authentic psychological and theological interpretations of the self’s

philosophy and theology as well as psychology, it will be defined

this book to my wife, Joann, and to Eileen Flanagan and Phillip

The meaning of “self” is crucial for pastoral counseling and spir¬

Mary finally found a community that seemed very promising,

and locates her in the third of his six stages-Synthetic-Conven-

While Mary credited God for guidance in many of her decisions,

thinks that while Mary’s cognitive ability, or Form of Logic, is

marked by special faculties of seeing and hearing, a spiritual intel¬

Mary was incapable of faith, but as a transcended inner person she

imperative and the indicative in the moral life, and a relatedness to

While pastoral counseling as we know it today is essentially a

IDEALS OF THE SELF THROUGH

in America as a succession of changing ideals of the self: from self-

Sin was a central focus of religious life in seventeenth-century

While most pastors of both persuasions still agreed on the

century ministers, drawing from theology and psychology, hit upon a

of salvation, and on the necessity of surrendering the conscious

together the social and theological critiques in a powerful synthesis

Johnson, and Wayne Oates. Holifield’s fine history has brought us

dark universe. This last Christian perspective is broad and deep

Carroll Wise continued the Rogerian influence on pastoral

become an autonomous, self-determining agent with his or her own

7) persons grow through love.30 In this interpersonal context John¬

experimentation. The goal of the third phase, clearly influenced by

The Contexts of Pastoral Counseling

Cline bell’s “Revised Model "

While the continuing work of Hiltner, Wise, Johnson, and Oates

growth “toward the fulfillment of [one’s] unique personhood,”

The “Re vised Model Re vised

Clinebell’s personal and professional experience during the

“holistic, seeking to enable healing and growth in all dimensions

of self-denial. Can psychological ideals of self-realization, self-

Self-Realization and Self-Denial

seek evidence to establish truth in realistic judgments. And in prac¬

conversion, the self’s autonomy is relativized and one’s life is

Understanding the Self

FROM PERSON TO SELF: A BRIEF HISTORY

metaphysics of being, with its notion of the human individual as an

or cold, of pain or pleasure, he could never observe anything but the

unconscious ego that integrates experience and the conscious “I,”